


Thanks For The Ride

by skarletfyre



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Hand Jobs, Hitchhiker AU, M/M, Strangers, Supernatural Elements, Vaguely Spooky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-10
Updated: 2016-01-08
Packaged: 2018-05-05 01:41:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5356217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skarletfyre/pseuds/skarletfyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On his annual trip home for the holidays, Mundy finds himself picking up a hitchhiker on the side of the road. It's about a week's drive to his destination, and as the days pass he begins to wonder just which of them is really the one along for the ride.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Day One - Arrival

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Roadtrip AU Drabbles - Speeding Bullet](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/161246) by sillyscrunchy. 



> inspired with permission by sillyscrunchy's wonderful little drabble, in the sense that Sniper and Scout are in a vehicle together, Sniper is awkward and reserved, and Scout has no concept of boundaries or personal space
> 
> never written this pairing before, or a proper AU type scenario, so i'm excited to see if i can make this all work out the way i want!

Coming home never really felt like coming home.

Australia was the one place he never really felt like he fit in. America was grand for work, full of types willing to pay and pay well for his expertise, but the nature of his work was what made it risky to stay there long term. Canada was nice, if you didn't mind the cold, which he did. England, it turns out, was the worst fucking place he'd ever been and he had no intentions of ever going back – he was sick with a head cold for the whole two weeks, and he was convinced the wheezy rattle in his chest when it rained was another unpleasant leftover from the trip.

The hot, humid climate of South America had prepared him for the weather back home – he was pre-tanned and everything. His skin was stained a healthy, well-earned shade of brown everywhere except the soles of his feet and where his briefs covered around his hips.

That was about the only thing that made him look like he belonged in this country he begrudgingly called home.

Arriving by ship at Perth, Mundy was already painfully reminded out how much he stood out as an outsider. All around him he saw glistening muscles and bushy, styled moustaches on men and women alike, on pre-teens and elderly both. The man at the customs desk looked up at him in surprise when the rought notes of his native accent dropped from his mouth. He saw the man's eyes linger first on his bare upper lip, then his slim shoulder and lanky, wiry frame. The woman at the next counter stapled thin air as she pretended not to look at him out of the corner of her eye.

He left the office as fast as he could without running, without drawing any more attention to himself.

 _Home._ There wasn't a fucking homey thing about it.

It took forty-five minutes for the magnetically powered cranes to unload his camper from the ship, lowering it slowly as a man whose shoulders three times as wide as Sniper's own hollered at people to stay clear. He claimed his vehicle without once opening his mouth. Showed the papers, showed his ID, payed the fee, and gave a polite nod on his way out. He didn't even inspect the van for damage before climbing and driving off in his haste to get away.

The cities were the worst. Too many people, too many walking, talking expectations of what he as an Australian was “supposed” to be, and never, ever would. It was easier on the road, once he'd gotten out of the tangle of electric hovercars and magnetic buses and he wasn't the only _obsolete_ vehicle in sight.

Nobody in the cities would be caught driving a car that still used wheels and combustion engines.

Mundy got out of there as soon as he could, loosing his shoulders and his grip on the wheel as his claustrophobia lessened the further he got from the shadow of the skyscrapers. The open road was more a friend to him than anyone he'd met in his homeland. The road, at least, would always lead him somewhere interesting.

He was about an hour and a half outside the city when he saw it.

Mundy squinted behind his yellow tinted lenses, trying to make out the shape on the side of the road. A dark, wiggly, vaguely human figure distorted by the heat of the midday sun. He must have been seeing things. Nobody would be stupid enough to be out walking this time of day, this far from the city.

But apparently someone _was_ stupid enough, because it really was a person. A person who stuck their hand in the air as he neared, waving their thumb wildly.

A hitchhiker. _Christ._

The van slowed as Mundy pulled off to the side of road, vocally cursing himself and his own good nature as he did so. Not many people came out this way. If he didn't stop now who knew when someone else might?

He watched in the side mirror as the person jogged up along side the van, leaning over to manually crank down the window when they got close enough. A blast of hot air seeped into the cab. A moment later, the window was filled with a smiling, hairless, and very sunburned face.

“Thanks for stopping, man!” the man said brightly and, oh, for fuck's sake, he was an American. “Didn't think you were gonna stop there for a second.”

“You alright?” Mundy asked, trying not to be blinded by the row of white, perfectly straight if not a little buck teeth grinning at him. “Not the best time of day for a stroll, mate.”

The American laughed, an awkward little bray, and attempted to lean his bare forearms on the car door.

“Y-yeah,” he said, hissing and jolting back and the heat. “Yeah, I guess you're right about that. I, uh, didn't think it'd be that far, actually.”

“Where about are you headed?”

“Anywhere, really,” the American replied, filling Mundy with a deep sense of dread. Hell, he was one of _those_ types. A backpacker, by the look of the huge pack slung over his skinny shoulders. The worst kind of tourist. “Just tryin' to be along for the ride.”

Those words confirmed Mundy's biggest fears.

This hitchhiker did not have a destination in mind, or a map that he could point to and give an idea of exactly how long they would be stuck in the car together. An indefinite companion.

_Fucking hell._

“Get in, then,” Mundy sighed, reaching over to pull up the lock. He didn't think that white smile could any wider, but he'd been proven wrong before.

“Really? Aw thanks, man, really, that's real nice of ya! I'll be real good company, I swear.”

If anything about that statement struck Mundy as odd, he didn't have any time to process it or change his mind. The side door of the cab creaked as it was pulled open, and then a threadbare, extremely overstuffed backpack was being shoved into the floorboard, taking up almost the entirety of the space. The man climbed in after it and gave it a few ungentle kicks as he made room for his own legs. Then he slammed the door, buckled his lap belt, and he was in.

He'd done it. He'd picked up a hitchhiker.

“Scout,” the American said, sticking out a curiously bandaged hand toward him. It took Mundy a moment to realize he was introducing himself.

“Mundy,” he answered automatically, taking the proffered hand. The man had a surprisingly firm grip for someone who was surely in the early stages of heatstroke.

Or perhaps “man” wasn't the right word.

Now that he could get a good look at the guy out of the glaring sun, Mundy could see just how bloody young he was. Underneath the red and blistered cheeks was a face that couldn't grow hair if its life depended on it. The American – _Scout,_ apparently – was wearing a brimmed cap with a stylized “B” embroidered up the front, covering his close-cropped blonde hair and leaving his ears and the back of his neck completely exposed to the sun. Worse than that, he was wearing a t-shirt. Red as Mundy's own uniform shirt, which was the only clean shirt he had at the moment. The thin plaid button up he wore over it was about a week overdue for the laundry, but he had to have something to cover his arms for the drive. Pity no one had told the kid that.

“You from around here?” Scout asked. Mundy read through the lines. _You sound like it, but don't look like it._

“Further South,” he answered easily, flicking on his turn signal before pulling back onto the open road. There wasn't another car in sight, but it was a good habit to have. He rubbed self consciously at his upper lip with the back of his hand and glanced at the kid out of the corner of his eye. “American?”

“Yup! Born and raised in Boston!”

The boy tugged proudly on the brim of his 'B' cap. Mundy had spent enough time in America to have a vague idea of where Boston was. One of the 'M' states, wasn't it? Or was it a state by itself?

“You ever been to the States?” the kid asked as the van picked up speed, kicking dust onto the empty shoulder of road he'd been walking down only minutes before. There was a beat of silence while Mundy decided exactly how much information he should share on the subject. He had, after all, just gotten back from the United States. All his luggage was marked as such.

“Mm-hmm,” was what he came up with. Probably too evasive, but better than getting caught in a lie.

The kid gave him a sidelong glance. Shit. Definitely too evasive.

“I'd never even left New England before this,” Scout pressed on. “I mean, I'd thought about it before, ya know, just never got around to it until now. Who knew all it woulda took was a couple cheap plane tickets to get me off my ass and doin' something with my life. I just picked the farthest place from home on the map and said 'I wanna go there!' And you're probably askin' yourself what a talented, good lookin' guy like me would wanna leave home for, right?”

Wrong. Mundy had not asked, nor had he really been wondering. He was busy keeping an eye on the four or five emu a ways in the distance, making sure none of the bastards were going to run out in front of his van. But the American went on talking anyway.

“Well ya see Tommy said he had this job for me – that's my brother, Tommy – well, one'a my brothers, but he was the one with a job, only it wasn't actually a job it was just that 'volunteer' crap, workin' all day for peanuts – and I'm talkin' _actual_ peanuts here, I told him I couldn't put nuts in the freakin' bank, man, or I woulda done that ages ago –“

It quickly became apparent that Scout was not going to stop talking. Mundy nodded politely for a while, throwing in the occasional 'yeah' or 'is that so?' But after about twenty-five minutes his neck was starting to get sore from bobbing his head and he'd run out of affirmative-sounding noises to make. The kid kept on yammering regardless. Maybe he just liked the sound of his own voice, or he didn't notice Mundy's somewhat visible discomfort at having to be continuously social. Either way, it was better than silence, at least.

The radio had been busted a couple months back when a couple kids tried to rip it out of the dashboard. Mundy had caught them in the act and ran them away with his hollering, but the poor thing had never played music again. A damn shame, too. One of his favourite tapes was still stuck in the deck. His efforts to pry it out had resulted in the ballpoint pen that was awkwardly jammed in there as well. Worst of all, the pen had to _stay_ there. If he let the tape fall into the place the speakers would start playing static, that awful, back-of-your-mind fuzz that gave him so many headaches as a kid, before his dad found the old cassette player plugged in at the back of his closet.

But thinking of his father put a sour taste in Mundy's mouth. And knowing that he'd be in the same house as the man in a few short days only made it worse.

He shook himself from his thoughts and tuned back in to what the kid was saying.

“-so she looks at him and says 'That ain't my mother! How old do you think I am?!' And he's sweatin' so hard his beard glue is coming unstuck and I'm just standin' there _dyin'-”_

On second thought, maybe not.

 

* * *

 

The first couple hours of Mundy's journey home passed in a similar fashion. He'd crawl inside his own head for a while, and when that got to be too cringe-inducing and depressing to deal with anymore he'd crawl back out and lend an ear to his new American acquaintance. The highway was straight and flat and mostly empty, save for the few wheeled vehicles flying past in the direction they'd come from. Farmers or regular folk who weren't well-off enough to live in the cities. They were lucky to live as close as they did; a few of them might even work there.

That was one of the worst things about the country, and something that made it harder and harder to come home every time. In most of the rest of the world that he'd seen, regular folk seemed to get at least half a chance of making something out of themselves.

In Australia, if you were born in the city, any City, that's likely where you would spend the rest of your life. You'd have no trouble finding work or money, no trouble making friends or finding people like yourself. There were few reasons to leave the towering glass and metal spires, or the automated food processors, or the ebbing sea of muscles and loud voices and body hair. Transportation was pretty self contained as well. Most families owned a hover vehicle or two and were able to simply float to work or school by riding the high-powered magnetic rails that ran beneath every street and alley.

The really well-off folks had their own private teleporters. They were still fixed, as far as Mundy knew, meaning they could only pop to one predetermined location like an office or a hospital, but he'd been reading the Technical Advancements Catalogue – a sort of catch-up guide for citizens who'd been away, “Don't be alarmed at the new features of society that developed while you were away!” - and apparently some lady was working on making the teleporters programmable. Synch up the network and pop on over to your best friend's house without ever setting foot outside.

Piss on that. A little fresh air never did anyone any harm.

There were public teleporters, of course, for emergency use. Most led to hospital lobbies or evacuation sites, but the public network had always been unreliable. Too many people teleporting at once and clogging up the system, people going missing for days while the filters sorted them out. _If_ they could sort them out. The Minister of Transport swore up and down that there'd never been any documented deaths due to faults in the public network, but everyone knew he was lying, the bastard.

That was exactly the sort of bullshit he'd had to live with growing up, living the way his family did. On a farm, not half big enough to be considered a cattle station, a ways outside of Adelaide. The lights of the city were always in sight on clear nights when he climbed onto the roof of the barn, or the house, or the branches of the big old gum tree out in the field before the lightning struck it. It always looked so close, but life in the city was farther away than Mundy could have possible imagined when he was boy.

He never liked it then and he didn't like it now. And coming “home,” to whatever home was supposed to be, never felt like the good and powerful experience that it was meant to.

“Hel _lo?_ Hey, you still in there?”

Mundy was jolted out of his angry revery by a bandaged hand waving frantically in front of his face.

“Sorry,” he said automatically, only then realizing that he'd been clenching his jaw hard enough to make it ache. “I was thinking about-”

 _Infrastructure, for god's sake._ He grimaced.

“What did I miss?”

Scout was looking at him funny, which was understandable.

“I was askin' if you had anything to drink, man, we've been on the road for a while. Don't you people have rest stops here or somethin'?”

“Sorry,” Mundy said again, out of habit. “I, uh, haven't really had time to stock the place up. There should be a beer or two in the back, but I can't guarantee the temperature.”

“Can you get to the back from in here?” the kid asked, turning in his seat to stare dubiously at the solid panel behind them. He gave it a rap with his knuckles. “I mean, you don't gotta pull over or anything, I was just wondering, ya know?”

Mundy did indeed know. He was getting a bit parched himself, going so long without a sip of something.

“There should be a stop a bit ahead. I'll pull off and see what I can find for us.”

_Or me, if you decide to leave off here._

'Here' was, of course, a small petrol station with a little shop that sold sodas and ice creams and dried snacks made to last long journeys. Stops like this between cities were few and far between, even along the highways.

Mundy topped off the tank just to be safe while Scout went into the shop to find something to eat. When the gas tank was full with time left over to take a piss and he still hadn't come out, Mundy got fed up of waiting and headed in.

Turned out the kid only had American money on him, and could barely understand the accent of the bloke behind the counter. He'd grabbed a six pack of the worst beer available, a can of expensive and disgustingly sweet imported American soda, and a comically small bag of seasoned beef jerky. Mundy stood in the doorway for a moment and watched the kid wave his paper in the bored shopkeeper's face trying to get out a response that he could understand. And when that clearly wasn't going to work, Mundy intervened.

First thing he did was put the fucking piss water back in the fridge and grab them a case of a proper beer. He snagged a handful of nutrition bars and a little bag of gummy candies off the shelf before returning to the register. He gave the cashier his ID and credit card and gently rebuffed Scout's attempt to hug him in gratitude. They headed back to the van, the young American professing mixed thanks and indignation all the while, and got themselves back on the road.

Mundy wasn't exactly sure how long Scout planned on sticking with him, but he was a little happier for the company after getting some food in him. It was a long drive home without a friendly face in sight. He supposed he might as well enjoy it while it lasted.

In fact, the longer the day went on, the more he found himself liking the chatty American. He talked a mile a minute about everything from family feuds to favourite baked goods, and normally that sort of endless yammering would give Mundy a migraine. But there was something about the kid and the way he spoke, bragging and posturing even as he tripped over his own words, gesturing engagingly with his oddly wrapped hands on the edge of Mundy's peripheral vision, never letting one thought linger too long in the air. It was – and Mundy did not use this word lightly – _charming._

He'd spent too long on his own, he figured, for the company of a motor-mouthed American to be so enjoyable. But even if he wasn't really following everything the guy said, he still liked the sound of it. _Most_ of it.

“Hey, you want me to blow ya?”

The question came from nowhere. One minute the kid was yakking about his high school baseball days and then... this.

Mundy took a long time deciding whether or not he'd heard right, and then even longer trying to work out a response.

“ _What?”_

“Ya know, uh...”

The kid made a loose fist and brought it up to his mouth, making a lewd jerking motion in front of the 'O' of his lips. Mundy looked quickly away.

Plenty of poofters out in the cities, but out where he was from there wasn't a lot of room for men like that, 'specially not being out in the open about it.

For men like _him._

How had he known? What had he done in the past five hours of sitting and driving that this cocky little American could take one look at him and know him for what he was? The kid could be guessing, he supposed. Or having him on. But even so, the risk of propositioning a complete stranger in a foreign country was sure to outweigh the odds of having a good laugh.

The kid was either serious or testing him.

“Nah,” Mundy finally responded, swallowing hard against the sudden dryness of his own throat. “Nah, that's, uh... nah.”

Scout dropped his hand to his lap and shrugged.

“Suit yourself, man, I was just offering. Hey, you got any of those gummies left?”

This change of tone was giving Mundy whiplash. Five hours of mindless, casual chatter, then a sexual proposition, now it was back to conversation as usual? Was he imagining things?

He'd bought the gummy worms for himself, a silly little treat and one of the few he allowed himself, but he sheepishly handed them over all the same. He was still trying to collect himself as the bag was ripped open and the sickly sweet scent of corn syrup and chemical food colouring filled the cab of the truck. He almost didn't even hear the kid say thank you.

Mundy made the mistake of looking over as Scout tossed another candy into his mouth. He slurped the gummy worm like spaghetti, smooth cheeks hollowing slightly as he sucked the candy through his very pink, very soft looking lips.

It was the worst thing that could have happened.

Mundy kept his eyes focused forward with enough intensity to strain, gripping the steering wheel at ten and two with white, gangly knuckles. He completely ignored the spark of heat in his lower regions. It was a skill he'd built over the past three decades of life, from his very first experience with it at the tender age of twelve, watching Saxton Hale chop down a three hundred year old tree with his own bare hands. It was men. It was always men, and it was always safer to hide it than get caught with his pants down in any sense of the expression.

He didn't know what the kid was after. He didn't know if this was going to be a problem or another reason to be looking over his shoulder, but he wasn't going to take the risk of finding out – even if that meant missing out on a good thing.

Because it wouldn't be good. Foreign hitchhikers offering casual sex was one of those things that only happened in the movies. It was a trick something, it had to be, and Mundy wasn't going to fall for it. He just wouldn't. Simple as that.

 

* * *

 

Mundy didn't say a word for the rest of the day and he barely heard anything the kid said either, so determined he was to put the earlier proposition out of his mind. When the sky began to darken at long last and the jet lag began to catch up him, he had no choice but to break his silence.

“I'm pulling over here,” he said, his voice hoarse with thirst and disuse. Scout broke off mid-sentence and looked around out the window. There was nothing but open road in front of them and flat, dry earth for miles on either side. Mundy carefully turned the van into the dirt, jostling at the new uneven ground.

“Here?” the kid asked. “Why?”

“Gotta get some sleep.”

“ _Here?_ We're out in the middle of nowhere, ain't there a motel or somethin' we could get to?”

Mundy almost laughed.

“Not out here, there's not. Not for a ways, at least, and I don't trust myself to stay awake that long.”

“I could drive.”

“You know how drive stick?”

“Yeah, sure,” Scout said unconvincingly. Mundy brought the camper van to a halt in the dust, still well in sight of the road, and cut the engine. He unbuckled his seat belt and gestured for the kid to do the same.

The air had cooled dramatically outside. With the sun no longer beating overhead and instead sinking into the distance horizon, the sky had become a canvas of deep purples and oranges, fading fast into blackness. The stars were already twinkling overhead. This far from the city with no unnatural light to obscure them, the little pinpricks of light were absolutely breathtaking.

Or they would have been, if Mundy hadn't grown up looking at that sky, and had long since stopped finding it extraordinary. He gave an upward glance as Scout let out a small exclamation of wonder, but that was about all the energy he could spare at the moment. His long carried around to the back of the camper, kicking up dust as his boots scraped along. It took him thirty seconds to find the key, and then he tried to put it in upside down. Fucking hell, he was more tired than he'd first thought...

“Whoa,” Scout said, climbing in behind him after the lights had been switched on. “So do you like, live in here?”

“Sometimes,” Mundy admitted, trying and failing to surreptitiously kick bits of laundry and clutter out of the walkway. The camper was not large, but it was tall enough that even he could stand straight up in it. It had all the simple amenities a man could ask for. A table and seat to sit and eat at. A small stove to make his coffee and breakfast on. A little four by four closed area that housed the shower, sink, and toilet – the shower and sink worked, the toilet did not. A good amount of cupboards and storage spaces, plus the shelves and racks he'd added in himself. There was a soft bed at the front, hanging over the cab, that wasn't nearly long enough for him to stretch out on. But then he'd always preferred to sleep curled up a little.

The problem, of course, was that there was only _one_ bed.

Even with his 'predilections,' as his mother would said, Mundy had never been all that shy about sharing a bed, even with strangers. Everyone needed to sleep. But after what'd happened earlier, with the whole proposition business... Well, he wasn't sure that was a good idea after all.

“C'mon up,” Mundy said, stepping aside into the booth to let the kid get past him in the narrow space. “You can have the cot, I'll take the aisle.”

Scout's arm brushed Mundy's chest as he scooted past. The brief contact felt like a static shock. Likely an accident, but it gave him goosebumps all the same.

“You sure?” Scout asked, looking between the bunk and the dirty floor. “I mean, I don't mind, and you said you were tired.”

But Mundy waved away his concerns and grabbed a spare blanket from a cabinet, fully intending to throw it down and fall asleep as soon as he hit the floor.

The kid peeled off his shirt in a single fluid motion, and Mundy felt his face go red.

It was just a glance. Just a half a look at the toned, hairless chest and stomach, just a vague impression of jutting hipbones and a soft, thin trail of hair leading down to a low-cut waistband. Mundy got that brief flash of an imagine, and then his eyes snapped firmly up to the ceiling. He cleared his throat and almost choked.

“Actually I'll, uh, I'm gonna sl- sleep in the, uh, cab.”

“What?” Scout asked, as Mundy was already backing away out the door, blanket in hand. He waved his other hand in a way that would've been casual if he hadn't hit the wall in the process.

“S'fine. You can, uh- I'll be-”

Then he was outside and didn't have to come up with anymore words. Mundy shut the door loudly and fought off the reflex to lock it behind him. He stood in the dirt for a moment, face burning, hands clenched into fists at his sides, and quietly instructed himself to breathe and calm the fuck down for chrissake he only took his shirt off, it wasn't a big deal, it wasn't even a deal at all. It wasn't anything. It was fine.

 _It's fine_ had become Mundy's mantra to himself somewhere along the way. He repeated it now, under his breathe, as he stalked quickly around to the front of the van again. He climbed into the driver's seat and startled himself when he slammed the door properly behind him.

Now that the moment had passed and he'd taken a few deep, calming breaths, Mundy realized what an absolute fucking fool he was.

The bench seat of his truck was even smaller than his bed, meaning his long legs would have to go out the window if he wanted to stretch at all. Also, the cab was not insulated. The blanket would help, but it wouldn't save him if the temperature dropped. And now he couldn't go back in the camper without looking like a complete bloody wreck of a human being.

All that over a bit of bare skin. What the hell was he turning into?

It wasn't entirely his fault, he reasoned grumpily as he tried to make himself comfortable for the night. Laying on his back, with his knees bent and his feet flat on the seat let him at least stretch out his aching spine. But that kid... That American, with his braying laugh and his pretty mouth, and his abs. Saying things like he said, putting ideas in Mundy's head. It didn't make any sense. Nothing about him made any sense at all.

Just who the hell had he picked up?

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so obviously i have kept the idea of Australia behind hyper technologically advanced
> 
> that is because otherwise i would have to research what Australia was actually like in the late 1960's and i am a very lazy person who does not have time for that. so that's the same from the tf2 universe.
> 
> there's some other things that are the same too. we'll get to that.


	2. Day Two - Concession

Mundy did not sleep soundly.

When the morning sun crept over the horizon, rising slowly in the wide open sky, the very first thing it did was hit him full in the face and wake him from the slumber he'd oh so briefly attained. The first move he made sent pain lancing through his back. His legs were so cramped he had to count down from ten to stop from screaming when he first tried to shift them, and even then his muscles cramped in protest.

It took a lot of effort and swearing, but Mundy finally managed to sit up and open the driver's side door. His long, cramped legs tumbled out to dangle over the edge of the seat and in that moment he'd never felt anything more heavenly in his life. He stood and wobbled a bit as he stretched in the mid-morning sun. Arms over his head, nothing and no one around for miles, the smell of kangaroo shit on the air...

 _Ah,_ it was good to be home.

Then he remembered that there was not, actually, no one else around for miles. There was someone very close by, and that someone was the reason he hadn't slept in his bed in the first place.

Mundy stood very still, suddenly unsure how to proceed.

He didn't necessarily want to barge in and wake the kid up, but he also wanted to get on the road as soon as possible. It would be getting hot soon, and there were still many miles between where they were and where he wanted to be.

Resigning himself to the fact that he'd have to inconvenience someone, Mundy sighed and trudged around to the back of the van. He knocked politely.

“It's open,” he heard Scout call from inside, and pulled the door open.

Thankfully the kid was already awake and half sitting up with one of his long legs hanging over the edge of the bunk. He yawned and waved in greeting as Mundy stepped inside.

“You look like hell, man,” Scout said in place of a good morning. “Toldja you should've taken the bed.”

Mundy gave a non-committal grunt and started getting out everything he needed to make his morning coffee. He certainly felt like hell. After the way he slept last night, he was going to need the whole pot.

The kid yawned again and slipped gracefully down from the high bunk while he was grinding up the beans.

“This thing got a bathroom in it?” Scout asked, stretching obscenely. Mundy heard every one of his joints as they popped and every soft little exhale of relief the kid let out. He focused every ounce of his attention on measuring his coffee grounds out right down the last granule.

“Yes, but it doesn't work.”

“Then what am I supposed to do, hold it?”

Mundy nodded pointedly out the window.

“There's a tree over there, mate. If you'd like some privacy.”

Scout made a sputtering sound.

“Are you telling me you gotta piss outside _every time?”_

Mundy decided not to mention the collection of Mason jars he'd repurposed out of necessity and laziness over the last year and a half. He shrugged uncomfortably. Scout threw up his hands and turned around.

“Fine, yeah whatever, I'll just go mark my territory on a frickin' tree or somethin'. Yeesh.”

The van door banged shut behind him. Mundy let out the breath he was holding and let himself relax a little.

While the kid was out and he had a moment to himself Mundy decided to quickly change his clothes. Or change his shirt, at the very least, into something that didn't smell like it came from the bottom of the laundry pile.

Which was, unfortunately, where he would had to dig for another clean-ish shirt.

He got carefully down to the floor by his bunk where most of his discarded clothes ended up and started sifting through the small pile. He supposed he could always get his suitcases out and start digging through them for an _actual_ clean shirt, but the last thing he needed was the for the kid to walk in and see half of what he had in his pack. So a non disgusting t-shirt from a week ago would have to do.

While he was down there Mundy couldn't help but notice the general mess of the place. He hadn't been taking care of himself or his place of dwelling lately and he knew it, but that was before there was anyone else around to see the place like that. The crumpled candy wrappers and bits of old food were just too much. He started picking things up and chucking them into the trash.

That was when he saw it.

It was the white that caught his attention. There weren't a lot of clean, white things in his life these days, much less in his van. But there it was, in the little waste bin he'd tucked next to his bunk. A white, wadded up tissue that _he_ had absolutely not put there.

_The little fucker had a wank in my bed._

He should have been furious. He should have been disgusted and outraged. They were, after all, complete strangers. They'd only been a few feet apart, for chrissake, even if there was a wall between them. The normal reaction would be to be mad about it. But Mundy had never been normal. His peers and parents had told him so often enough, at least.

He thought about Scout stretched out as much as he could in the cramped little bunk, twisting this way and that to try and make himself comfortable. He thought of Scout, shirtless, trailing one of those bandaged hands of his down his chest and stomach, down the sharp jut of his hip bones and through the fine trail of hair he now knew was there beneath his belly button. Pushing down the low waist of his pants. Trying to be quiet and still as he could as he jacked himself off in another man's bed, a stranger's bed, in a strange country with no one around them for miles and miles.

Mundy wondered if the kid could smell him on his bedsheets. If he'd imagined Mundy's own large, rough hands touching him while he touched himself.

The front of his pants was immediately tighter.

Mundy swallowed hard as he scrambled awkwardly to his feet, looking wildly around to make sure he was still alone. Standing shirtless with a wicked blush and a prominent erection was not a good way to be if walked in on.

He found managed to find himself a shirt that wasn't too smelly and wrinkled, and it was long enough that he could pull it awkwardly down over his front and hide the worst of his shame from view. Mundy managed to clothe and cover himself just before the door to the camper was opened and Scout climbed back inside.

“You got anything to eat?” the kid asked, as Mundy was trying to pull the hem of his shirt further down past his hips. He cleared his throat.

“Ah, yeah. Should have some cereal around in one of the cabinets. No milk, though.”

“Is that it?” Scout whined, pulling open the nearest cupboard and looking dubiously at the contents. Mundy took the kid's distraction as an opportunity to tug at and readjust the front of his pants.

“Yup, 'fraid so. Unless you want gator jerky for brekkie.”

Scout scrunched up his nose at the thought. He grabbed the box of generic corn flakes off the shelf and shook it before peeking inside. Whatever he found there, he must have been hungry enough for it to be worth it.

Mundy found some clean bowls and washed some spoons for them to eat their dry cereal with. They found their seats on either side of the little table and set about crunching their way through their meals.

The flakes were dry and starting to go stale, but Mundy wasn't complaining. It was far from he worst thing he'd ever found and eaten in his van, and the fresh coffee helped wash it down smoothly. In fact, the most enjoyable part about it was simply having a meal with another person across from him; enjoying shared food with another human was sadly a luxury he'd been unable to afford in his last few months abroad. Not that there weren't people around. It was just safer to be on his own. Less chance of being seen that way, or worse, remembered.

Things would be easier in Australia in one regard. At least there, out in this bush on his home farm, nobody would even spare him a glance.

The kid's foot bumped against his under the table.

Now Mundy was a tall man. He had long, skinny legs, and he was used to them getting in the way or getting into other people's space. It was automatic for him to shuffle his feet backward to try and take up less room.

He glanced up, briefly, when he felt his toes being nudged again.

Scout was looking at him. Not staring, not caught in the middle of an accidental peek. Just... looking. Watching him across the table with those big, bright blue eyes of his. He was doing it on purpose.

Mundy dropped his eyes to his own bowl and tried to inch his leg even further back. When his ankle hit the solid faux wood siding he knew that there was nowhere else to go. Scout's toes pressed softly on the arch of his foot and he grit his teeth, thinking again of the wadded up tissue and how it had gotten there.

It was just something he would have to deal with, then.

When the food and drink was gone Mundy didn't waste time washing dishes. He threw them in the sink and made his own visit to the pissing tree before setting out. The cab felt smaller than it had before, or maybe the kid was just sitting closer than he had been. There was a disconcertingly small amount of space between them and Mundy cranked the ignition, but when he glanced over all he got was a cheery smile.

Scout popped a stick of bright pink gum into his mouth as the van pulled into the road. The cab filled with the sickly sweet scent of sugar and chemicals.

Mundy reached over and cracked his window open a bit.

 

* * *

 

It was midday, and they'd been on the road for a good three and a half hours when Scout first put his hand on Mundy's thigh.

It wasn't so much a grab at first. It started slow and crept up on him. A bandaged hand falling casually onto the seat between them. Chewed down fingernails picking at the outer seam of his trousers, not enough to really feel it or even worry. Then the fingertips inched their way onto his leg, just above his knee, and Mundy's brain finally registered what was going on.

He twitched his leg, and the hand retreated.

Forty-five minutes later it was back.

The kid's hand made it a few inches higher up his leg this time before he twitched it away again. Scout made no comment at all on what he was doing. He just sat there, chattering away as usual, gesturing casually with his other hand and apparently pretending he had no idea what he was doing to the man beside him.

“So where are we headed anyway?” the kid asked, three hours into the day's drive, when his fingertips had made it all the way to the inner seam of Mundy's pants. Mundy was suffering. He didn't even register the question at first.

“What?”

“I mean, I know I don't exactly have a destination in mind but, uh, I guess I'd like to know where I'm goin' toward at least? Not that I'm gonna go all the way with you – don't wanna be an inconvenience or nothin' – just as far as you'll take me, I guess. But it's day two, ya know, I figured I oughta ask sometime.”

His hand had lingered long enough for the warmth of his skin to seep through the heavy denim.

“Home,” Mundy said automatically, without really meaning to. He should have said 'get your hands off me' or, more cleverly and suggestively, 'not while I'm driving.' Instead, he said, “My parent's house. For the holidays.”

“Holidays?” the kid asked, a curious little smirk at the corner of his mouth. “Ain't it a little early for that?”

It was. It was only the first week of December, nowhere near any kind of holiday. But it was also the truth.

“I wanted to miss the rush.”

“Not a fan of crowds, huh?”

The pressure of fingertips on the sensitive skin of his inner thigh. Mundy twitched his leg, and the hot little hand slithered away.

It came back, of course, but in the meantime Scout went back to his usual chattering, leaving Mundy alone with his thoughts on the other side of the cab.

He tried to really listen to what the kid was saying this time. Tried to focus on his words as they left his mouth. Mundy had spent the whole trip so far lending half an ear and missing whole chunks of information, only getting the gist of what was being said to him rather than the whole story. But even now, giving his full attention, he found it difficult to stay focused.

Scout was saying something about his brother, or maybe multiple brothers – it seemed like he changed the name every time. His brother, who worked in a bar, or maybe he owned the bar, or maybe he was just a drunk, meeting a girl while shitfaced and making a fool of himself. Or was he talking about his mother, bringing home a gentlemen who had a few too many and made a fool of _himself?_ Or maybe it was Scout who was drunk, and the girl was his mother, and he got his arse beat bloody for throwing up on her expensive new dress.

Mundy wasn't sure. He honestly, really wasn't sure.

Maybe the kid was just talking too fast to keep up with. Maybe his accent was thicker and hard to decipher than Mundy first thought it was. Worst case was his hearing was starting to go, which honestly wouldn't be that much of a surprise. He was on the cusp of middle age, after all. His dad couldn't hear a thing unless it was shouted in his face. And with his work, and the threat of ear damage and worse... Well. It could be any number of things, really. Maybe Mundy was just too stupid to put together what Scout was talking about. Wouldn't be the first time.

When he looked back down, sucked out of his focus by his own thoughts and distracted by a queer feeling in his stomach, he saw that Scout's hand was touching him again.

“So what's your family like?” the kid asked casually, swiping his thumb in little patterns on the top of Mundy's thigh. “You married?”

Mundy let out a loud bark of laughter.

“ _Now_ you're asking me that?” he asked, turning to shoot an incredulous look at his passenger. Scout just grinned at him with those white, buck teeth of his, smacking his gum all the while.

“Well are you?”

“No, I'm not bloody married. Not the marrying type, I suppose.”

The last part had slipped out unexpectedly. He figured it was fairly evident by now what he meant by that, to the kid at least. But it was another thing to say it out loud.

Scout shifted and stretched out in his seat as much as he could, his bandaged hand never leaving Mundy's tense thigh. He propped his other elbow on the armrest built into the door, smiling lopsidedly at Mundy as he settled in.

“Got any siblings?”

“No,” Mundy answered again, against his better inclinations. “No brothers or sisters. Just me and the dogs growing up.”

“Aw, man, you got a dog? That's so cool, I always wanted a dog but Ma would never let us get one. Only pet we ever had was that smelly old cat that liked to pee on my shoes. What kinda dogs didja have?”

“Cattle dogs, mostly. Couple of heelers and a koolie. We had a terrier of some kind for a few years, but it went missing during a storm. Never saw it again.”

Mundy stopped suddenly.

He hadn't thought about the dog in years. It was a mean, noisy little thing that used to chase him around the yard and bite his feet when they dangled over his chair. He hated that dog. It was the only dog his father ever liked, too, which only made him hate it more.

It was the sort of memory that he usually blocked out. That it would come up now didn't sit well with him.

He shifted his leg again, like he'd done before. Scout's hand didn't move.

Driving became a distraction.

Mundy kept his eyes on the road and his jaw clenched, trying to ignore the little twitches and the way the kid would drum his fingers against his femoral artery. Miles and miles of dry, cracked earth sped past them outside the windows and Mundy didn't see any of it. He didn't see anything but the road in front of him and the blurry, distorted suggestion of Scout's form in the seat to his right.

The heat of Scout's palm was burning into his upper thigh. He could feel the kid looking at him, not even bothering to be casual about it now. All that time trying to remain resolute and stick to his principles, trying to be discreet and polite, and now it was all going out the window. He could feel his resolve crumbling.

He was hard. There was no denying or ignoring that fact now, he was well past being able to push it to the back of his mind. He wanted it. He wanted to be touched.

He sucked in a breath when his wish was granted. Lightly, the worst kind of fucking barely-there pressure was all he got in the form of Scout's knuckles grazing against the solid bulge in the front of his jeans. He did it again, and then again for proof it wasn't an accident. It wasn't much, but it was enough to send sparks shooting up Mundy's spine. If that was all he was going to get, he had half a mind to pull the van over to the side of the road and outright ask for more.

Somehow the sky had gotten dark while he was distracted. Had they really been on the road that long, with Scout touching him all the while? They couldn't have. There was no way that many hours had passed.

And yet, the sky was darkening fast. Illuminated in the headlights, a sign for a truck stop appeared ahead of them. Two miles away, on the right. Mundy had never been a religious man, but at that moment he was willing to believe in miracles.

“You wanna stop for the night?”

Scout's voice came from right next to him, a hot, bubblegum scented breath against his ear even though the kid hadn't moved from his spot by the window. Mundy could feel those blue eyes boring into the side of his face.

He turned onto the exit when he saw the lights of the rest stop.

It was a small, greasy looking place with only two other trucks in the lot. The 'dining area,' advertised by the battered signboard missing a third of its letters, appeared to be nothing more than a couple vending machines sitting next to a table. The light outside the entryway was flickering.

It looked exactly as dirty as Mundy felt when he stepped out the van and had to pull his shirt down and adjust his jeans before walking in and renting a room to fuck a stranger in.

The person behind the counter was so old and grey that Mundy wasn't sure if he should call them ma'am or sir. The name tag clipped crookedly to their sweater was unhelpfully labeled 'Pat.'

“How much for a room?” he asked. Pat the cashier simply inclined their head to the left.

Mundy looked over to find the rates typed on a piece of paper taped the to wall. More surprisingly, he noticed a rotating wire rack stocked with condoms sitting on the counter top, right next to the sign in sheet. Another little paper sign stuck to the top listed the price. At least the place was aware of it's reputation.

He signed in and handed over thirty-seven dollars. Thirty-five for the room and two for the condoms. He did not make any further eye contact with Pat.

Scout was waiting for him by the door. He spotted the condoms and grinned.

They walked briskly to the room indicated on the keyring, every step building friction between Mundy's cock and the zipper of his jeans. The kid leaned against the wall as he fumbled with the key, reaching for him before they'd even gotten the door open. When the door _did_ open, Mundy practically fell forward in his haste to get inside.

Scout was on him before he turned the lights on.

The door slammed shut as Mundy was knocked into it by the force of Scout pushing against him. Mundy was immediately overwhelmed by the smell and taste of bubble gum as the kid's tongue slipped into his mouth, hot and slick, hot breath on his cheek, hot hands rucking up his shirt and tearing at the clasp of his pants. Mundy grunted as the front of his jeans were pushed roughly down. His hard on had subsided during his mortifying transaction with Pat and Cashier, but now it was back with a vengeance. Scout's fingers slipped beneath the elastic waistband of his briefs.

It had been too fucking long since Mundy had done anything like this. And this was so much more than the teasing, taunting touches in the car through his jeans. The kid had his cock fully in hand like he knew what to do with it.

“You gonna let me blow you now?” Scout was asking him, stroking him too fucking slow; the texture of his hand wraps lent a whole new type of sensation that was almost too rough to the touch. Scout's mouth was on his jaw, sharp little teeth nipping at his stubbled skin. Mundy put his hands on the kid's shoulders and pushed.

Scout's knees hit the floor hard from how quick he dropped to them, yanking Mundy's jeans the rest of the way down as he did so.

Mundy let out a hoarse shout as Scout took him straight to the root in one go. He pushed his knuckles into his own mouth, biting down to stifle himself as Scout pulled off his cock with a slow, hard suck. The tight seal of his lips left the head with a loud wet pop, sounding obscenely similar to the bubble gum he'd been cracking all day long. The kid's fingers dug into his thighs. He knelt there with his mouth wide open, pink tongue lapping lightly at the sensitive underside of his swollen head. He grinned. Then, without warning he pushed himself forward and took the whole shaft all the way down his throat.

All the air left Mundy like he'd been punched in the gut. That's what it felt like too as the muscles of his abdomen contracted sharply, making him hunch forward and nearly unbalance himself. The tight, velvety sleeve of Scout's throat clamped down around his cock as the kid swallowed him down as hard as he could. He nosed against Mundy's thick pubic hair and moaned, low and loud. Mundy's hands spasmed at his sides.

“ _Jesus-!”_

Scout pulled off him with a wet cough and laughed.

“Anybody ever tell you you got a real nice dick?”

Mundy's response of 'Well, actually' was abruptly cut off into a gasp when Scout leaned forward and again and pressed the flat of his hot tongue to his balls. He licked a hard stripe straight up to the tip and sucked it into his mouth, humming as he did so. The back of Mundy's head hit the door behind him with a dull thunk.

He heard a jingle and realized Scout was undoing his own pants, standing on his knees to push them down his thighs without ever pulling his mouth away from Mundy's cock.

It was when he brought his hands back up that things really picked up.

The kid could suck the red off a firetruck. With his mouth and hand working in tandem, Scout was relentless. He wrapped his fist around the base of Mundy's cock and jerked while he sucked the rest, slurping and gasping and moaning all the while like he loved it, like he fucking loved having that cock in his mouth and Christ if Mundy didn't love him for it, too. He was bleary eyed with pleasure but he could see the look of fucking concentration on Scout's face as he worked his rhythm up, looking up at him with those wide blue eyes through his pretty eyelashes.

He pulled back for a moment, panting with saliva and precum dripping down his chin, and stuck the middle and ring fingers of his free hand deep into his own mouth. He sucked them all the way down the knuckles, lathing his tongue around and between them to get them good and slick. Mundy watched him reach behind himself, spreading his knees further apart on the dirty carpet, as he bit his lip as he worked a finger into himself.

“Aw, fuck...”

That was all the exclamation Scout allowed himself before his mouth went back to work. Mundy kept his eyes open best he could, watching what he could see of Scout's arm and hand. The kid was fingering himself in time with his strokes, and making more noise and little gaspy fucking breaths than he was before.

He couldn't take it.

“Up,” Mundy gasped, pushing at Scout's shoulder with shaking hands. “Get off, I c- _fuck-”_

Scout backed off after a particularly cruel flick of his tongue. He grabbed his discarded shirt and used it as a rag before getting to his feet, the pair of them undressing as fast as they could. Mundy pulled his jeans off over his boots and yanked the collar of his shirt so hard he heard stitches pop. He advanced on Scout, backing him into the bed and climbing straight on top of him.

“You wanna fuck me?” the kid kept asking, even as Mundy pushed him down onto the mattress without even bothering with the covers first. “Yeah you wanna fuck me, huh?”

Mundy's hands were shaking as he tore open the box of condoms, remembered only because the saw them out of the corner of his eye on the bed. He'd never been so hard in the fucking life. He felt weightless and jumpy, super charged and off balance like he'd touched an electric fence. Every nerve in his body was a live wire.

“Shut up,” he growled as he grabbed Scout behind the knees, pushing his legs up and open as wide as he could. The kid's feet hooked around his back to pull him down, and Mundy was absolutely lost.

He pushed into Scout without any more prep than he had done to himself and was immediately overwhelmed by the hot, tight pressure that greeted him.

Scout matched him moan for moan, and gasp for gasp as he slipped halfway in on the first go and filled him completely on the second, slower thrust.

“ _Fuck,_ man...” Scout murmured, his head falling back into the thin pillow. “Quit teasin' like that, c'mon and fuck me.”

Mundy had always preferred to take his time with his lovers. Specifically he'd always preferred for his lovers to take their time with _him,_ but this week had been filled with nothing but exceptions so far. Might as well make another one. Not that he could have stopped himself if he tried.

Scout's eyes held him locked in place above him. Half lidded and gleaming in the darkness those eyes stayed on him as his body leaned forward. He pushed Scout's knees up to his chest in the process, still buried in him to the root. Mundy could barely see the kid's face in the shadows, save the sliver of his teeth. But he knew that he was grinning.

He bucked forward hard, then pulled back and did it again. Scout's face contorted and Mundy gave in completely.

The pleasure was so intense he almost felt sick. Every nerve ending in his body was aflame and tuned directly to his dick. Nothing else in the world mattered or would ever matter more than shoving himself into that tight little ring of muscle as fast and hard as he could, taking every second of it he could get for as long as he could get it for. He could feel his heartbeat through his cock. He could feel _everything_ through his cock. He couldn't tell up from down, couldn't tell if it was Scout's skin or his own hands that were so feverishly hot and slick with sweat, couldn't tell where he ended the skinny, panting boy beneath him began. Everything ran together

His hips smacking against Scout's ass. The moans they were making. Even their sound of their balls slapping together, everything came together in a primal harmony that threatened to drag him over the edge every moment they remained in contact.

Mundy felt like he was going to explode. The blood was thrumming through his veins and pounding in his ears. His muscles ached and the pool of heat below his navel was surely burning through him from the inside out but he couldn't stop yet, not fucking yet, because Scout was whispering promises to him through those bubblegum pink lips, urging him on through teeth like knives and telling him to hold on a bit longer and it would be better, he'd make it so much better. Mundy was giving him everything he had and Scout was begging for more, more, more, just like that just a little more just a little fucking _more-_

The orgasm that ripped through him filled his vision with white.

Mundy screamed as he came, the sound tearing up through his throat and bouncing off the insides of his skull. He slammed deep into Scout and felt the muscles of his thighs burning as they tensed, same with his arms and neck and chest. Scout's nails on his back felt like claws tearing into his flesh as the kid came right along with him, jerking himself off with a stuttered cry up onto Mundy's stomach, heels digging hard into Mundy's lower back.

His arms gave out beneath him. Mundy slumped forward with a pained grunt and buried his face in the pillow

His lungs were burning. It felt like he'd just run a marathon or three without stopping, using up all his body's energy stores in the process. There wasn't a single part of him that didn't feel worn out – including his cock.

Mundy groaned as he tried to roll onto his back, but only managed to turn onto his side. He slipped out of Scout and felt immediately cold. Even when the kid rolled to press against his chest and pulled Mundy's limp arm around his waist, it still felt like the room temperature had dropped a few degrees. Or was his skin just that fevered?

It didn't matter. He couldn't even keep his eyes open, much less try to get up and clean himself off. The sheets were soaked with sweat and his entire front felt sticky, but that didn't concern him nearly as much as it would have any other time. He was bone tired. There was no strength left in him to keep him awake.

As his vision started to darken, Mundy felt Scout's tongue scrape – scrape? – up his cheek. Nuzzling into his chest, the kid sighed.

“Come inside me for real next time, 'kay?”

 


	3. Day Three - Disquiet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lots of gratuitous sex in this chapter
> 
> you're welcome.

Mundy returned to consciousness like a drowned man being pulled from the river. Slowly, numbly, and then all at once. On moment he was in a deep sleep and the next he was blearily aware of his own body and the next moment he was wholly, violently awake.

He sat up and gasped so hard the air caught in his throat. The coughing fit shook his whole body. It also made him realize just how much everything _ached._ His back was killing him and so was his neck, and for some reason his legs and arms felt worn out as well. What the hell had happened to him?

He'd had sex, that's what. A nearly inconceivable idea by itself, notwithstanding the way he'd gone about it.

Mundy had no idea what had come over him last night. The way he'd acted, the things he'd done, it was all wildly out of character for him. He wasn't a pushy or demanding lover and he'd never been one for the rough, angry rutting like they'd showed in all the Australian adult films when he was growing up. And yet there he was, sitting up in a disheveled bed with an aching back from how hard he'd been ramming into the poor kid.

It didn't feel real. He remembered it, remembered everything now that he thought about it, but it was like it wasn't him doing all that work. Like someone else had been the one in control.

The little hairs at the back of his neck. He shook off a shiver. Mundy had never been on for superstitions or such nonsense. He must have been more pent up than he'd thought, and after a full day and a half of putting up with Scout's flirting and teasing had really gotten to him.

Where was the little mongrel anyhow?

Mundy looked over and got his answer.

Scout was still asleep beside him, lying on his stomach with his face turned away from Mundy. He looked asleep at least.

Carefully peeling away the grimy covers that he didn't remember pulling over himself, Mundy scooted over until he could put his feet on the floor. He was still completely naked, save the sock and boot still laced to his left foot. All the rest of his clothes, along with Scout's, were scattered in a shameful trail from the doorway.

His head was throbbing. He pulled the covers back and gave himself a once over, surprised to find he was cleaner than he thought he'd be. The condom that he'd passed out before taking off was nowhere to be found. The box was missing as well.

Mundy scrubbed his hands over his face and yawned deeply. Nothing was really making sense about last night, but he was certain all that would be solved with a good, strong cup of coffee. He stood up slowly. It took a few moments of wobbling and waving his arms for balance, but he managed to stand up straight and get a good look at their room for the very first time.

It was even smaller than he'd expected. The bed itself took up most of the room, and it was only a full-size mattress. There was enough space to walk around it to the sink and small bathroom, and a tiny amount of closet space. The whole place smelled like old cigarette smoke and sweat. Mundy was glad he'd been too distracted to notice it earlier.

He staggered his way to the bathroom and took a much needed piss, leaning heavily against the wall for support. What the hell was this weakness? He'd gotten a full night's sleep, hadn't he, so why was he was so fucking tired?

Mundy gave himself a once over in the mirror and immediately wished he hadn't. It would have been better not to know what he looked like.

His hair was an absolute mess, but that was no surprise. His face itself was the problem. The dark circles under his eyes gave him a sunken, sickly appearance, and he was badly in need of a shave with the three day stubble growing in as a patchy shadow on his thin cheeks. There was a hickey on his jaw, standing out strongly in varying shades of purple. Scout's doing. Mundy rubbed at it idly, turning his head this way and that and wondering if there was anyway to cover it up. It had been a long time since anyone had given him a mark of any kind, to be honest. He'd half forgotten all the tricks for dealing with such a thing.

Mundy was turning to exit the bathroom when he caught sight of his shoulder in the mirror. He stopped, hand halfway to the door handle, and stared.

Four deep, long gashes were carved down his back and side, standing out strongly against his bare skin where they had absolutely not been the day before.

Tentatively, Mundy reached back and touched them lightly with his fingertips. They didn't hurt. They didn't bleed. They felt and looked days old, half healed and scabbed over already.

But they couldn't have been. He would've remembered getting a wound like that, wouldn't he?

Scout had scratched him. Mundy was fairly sure of that, while they were fucking, but the kid couldn't have done this. He thought of Scout's hands, with their skinny fingers and stubby, bitten-down fingernails. That was the only possibility that he could think of, but... Well, it just wasn't possible.

Mundy spent a few more minutes staring at his reflection, staring at those scratches and running his fingers over the grooves of them and frowning all the while. He just didn't understand it.

When he stepped back out into the room proper, still naked as the day he was born, Scout was just starting to stir into waking. He bit his lip with those buck teeth of his as he stretched his arms over his head and arched his back off the mattress. When he opened his eyes, bright blue as the open sky on a clear day, and saw Mundy staring at him his mouth curled into a lazy grin.

“Hey, tiger,” he quipped, immediately following it up with a yawn and another, sensuous stretch. He rolled onto his side and propped himself up on an elbow. “You sleep as good as I did after that?”

Mundy should have felt bashful, standing there unclothed as he was. He'd never been good at mornings-after. But shy was the last thing he felt under Scout's half-lidded, sleepy gaze. He nodded. Scout's grin widened.

“You wanna do it again before we go?” the kid asked, repositioning himself suggestively in the bed. He pushed the sheet even further down his hips. Mundy could see the shape of his growing erection beneath the fabric.

And he was surprised with himself to realize, as he was already walking forward, that the answer was, “Yeah, alright.”

It was nearly past check-out time by the time they got through and washed and dressed. Mundy showered quickly, and in a state of hazy disorientation.

He'd flipped Scout onto his stomach and had him from behind, burying his face in between the kid's shoulder blades to muffle himself. He took it slower and softer than the first time, and the end result wasn't as intense as before. But it still left him shaking. He clenched his hands into fists to stop them from trembling, the jagged edges of his keys digging into his palms as he strode into the little office to check out.

Pat the Cashier was not behind the counter. Nobody was. Mundy stood and waited, then rang the little bell on the counter and waited some more. But nobody came.

He left the key on the counter and wrote his name in the yellowed, fly-stained guest log. He'd already paid, after all.

Scout was leaning against the passengers side door, waiting for him. Mundy took a few minutes longer to stock up on snacks and bottled water from the vending machines, and then they were off. It was nearly eleven, and they were leaving later than he would have liked, but he felt like it was going to be a good day regardless. Pulling out of the parking lot he looked over to find Scout smiling at him.

Yup. A good day, indeed.

 

* * *

“Watch the road, man, you almost hit a bird!”

“Bit hard to focus at the moment,” Mundy grumbled,

Scout's fist was wrapped firmly around his cock, his movements stalling briefly as the van swerved to the side.

“Oh, yeah?” he asked, that goddamn smirk evident in his voice. He twisted his wrist in a deliciously cruel motion. “What else is hard?”

Mundy unleashed a stream of jumbled profanities, flooring the gas pedal as he came all over his own shirt and the steering wheel.

“ _Fuck you,”_ he hissed through clenched teeth and heard Scout laugh in response, continuing to stroke him well past pleasure and into over stimulation. “Little f-fucking- alright, enough, that's en- _eugh-”_

He groaned loudly as Scout used his finger to scrape a thick glob of cum from Mundy's cock and popped it into his mouth with a satisfied hum. He licked his hand clean while Mundy watched, mouth hanging open, completely not watching the road in front of him. The kid swallowed theatrically and ran his tongue over his lips.

“You love it.”

And he did. He really did.

Scout had been teasing him almost from the moment they left the parking lot. First with the hand on his leg again, then outright groping him. Then the kid started touching _himself._ Sitting in the passenger seat with his pants open, massaging himself through his boxers at first, then pulling out his pretty pink cock and giving Mundy a hell of a show.

By one o'clock he'd had his head in Mundy's lap, sucking him down like he'd done the night before while Mundy tried his hardest not to drive them right off the road. It was like the kid couldn't keep his hands off him, or his mouth, or any part of him, really, which Mundy found he didn't mind half as much as he thought he would. Normally he wasn't one for all the touchy-feely business. Normally he wasn't one for having sex with strange young men he'd picked up on the side of the road. All of this was extremely abnormal, and yet he didn't ever want it to stop.

“Uh, is that s'posed to happen?” Scout asked suddenly. Mundy first looked down at his lap in horror before actually following the kid's eyeline, out the window, pointing at the mirror. Mundy checked his own mirror and swore.

Light blue-grey smoke was puffing out of the back of the camper, leaving an ominous trail flowing down the road behind them. A quick squint at the dashboard showed the engine temperature was dangerously high.

He took his foot off the gas and cursed himself some more. It was an old van, a good van but well past her years, and he knew better than to push too hard at the limits of the vehicle's capabilities. Going as fast as he was, as suddenly and for as long, was not good for the poor old thing and now she was letting him know that.

“Is it bad?” Scout asked as Mundy carefully edged the van off to the side of the road. He steered with one hand and did his trousers up with the other, mortified to realize he was still covered in his own spunk.

“Could be. Have to get under the bonnet and see first.”

Mundy cut the engine and roughly elbowed his door open. He yanked his soiled shirt over his head and wrapped the fabric, using it as a rag as he tried to pop the hood without burning himself. He had to cover his mouth and nose to protect them from the acrid smell of burnt oil. _Shit._

“Oh, not now...” Mundy whined, fanning away the smoke that greeted him.

The passenger side door slammed shut, and a moment later Scout was by his side. He pulled the collar of his t-shirt up to cover the lower half of his face.

“So is it bad?” he asked again.

“Well it's not bloody good,” Mundy snapped. He immediately regretted it and sighed. “Sorry. I, uh... well. I'll have to wait til she cools down before I can really get an idea of the damage. But yeah it, uh, looks like it might be bad.”

“Cool down?” Scout said, surprisingly unfazed by Mundy's outburst. “In this heat? How the hell long is that gonna take?”

The kid unfortunately had a point. It was half past 2 in the afternoon and they were completely out in the open under the beating sun. It be a miracle if the engine got even nearly cool enough to work on before nightfall. He grimaced, thinking about having to waste a day and night of driving being broken down on the side of the road. Even with the pleasant company, he hated to be delayed.

“Nothing I can do about it now,” Mundy grumbled. “Could try pouring water over it, but I don't think we've got enough for it to make a difference. Best just give it some time.”

Scout's expression turned thoughtful. He caught his bottom lip between his teeth.

“Wanna touch me while we wait?”

The absolute blatancy of the question caught him completely off guard. Mundy sucked in a sharp breath and choked on his own spit. He coughed loudly.

“Y-yeah,” he stammered out from behind his hand. “Fucking hell, yeah, I do.”

Scout's white teeth were blinding in the sun. He reached out and grabbed ahold of Mundy, pulling him by the belt the way one pulls a slightly dazed puppy. The inside of the van was already sweltering, but that didn't seem to matter at all as Scout's hands slid over Mundy's already bare chest through the soft, sparse hair, pinching at his peaked nipples, pushing him further into the camper.

Mundy was already getting hard, again, even after everything. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had so much sex, if ever. Even in his twenties, which were arguably the most reckless years of his life, there had never been anything like this.

Scout hopped up to sit on the table,

“Touch me,” he urged in a whisper. Mundy didn't have to be told twice.

He quickly lost track of time. Had it been an hour? Two? Over an hour of running his large, callused palms over the smooth flesh of the kid's chest, and stomach, and back and arms and thighs and calves, and then going all the way back over him again with his mouth. Scout murmured approval and encouragements as Mundy went along, hunched over on his elbows, mapping out the hard edge of a hip bone with the flat of his tongue. He'd already kissed and connected the dots on Scout's freckled shoulders. Already tasted the salt of his sweat and the bitter, antiseptic taste of cheap soap that didn't quite get washed away from his toned chest and abs. Already worshiped the upper half of him and had a mind to do the same to the rest. He'd sucked deep purple bruises into the hollow of Scout's throat. He planned to leave matching ones on the insides of his thighs where no one could see, just for them. His lips were swollen from all the work he'd put them through, but Mundy wasn't nearly done.

He was painfully, incredibly hard.

Scout was breathing hard above him, gasping and whimpering and tugging weakly at his hair as Mundy's mouth made its downward trek. With his legs hooked over Mundy's shoulders, Scout was completely spread open and exposed. His thighs trembled and twitched in Mundy's grip, framing either side of Mundy's head as he sucked and nipped and licked at Scout's tight, pink pucker. The hitched, breathy little moans and whimpers the kid was making were the sweetest fucking music he'd ever heard in his life and he never, ever wanted them to stop.

But he felt the same about the sharp, high moans and the babble of curses and praises that tumbled from Scout's lips when Mundy was fucking the daylights out of him. He somehow found a proper bottle of lube that had been in his van, sitting largely untouched for years, and got a little carried away with getting them both slicked up.

Mundy was transfixed, watching his own thick, glistening cock spearing into Scout's tight little hole again and again. He pulled out, smacked the head lightly against the kid's balls a couple times just to hear him yelp, then thrust all the way back in until his hips were flush against Scout's ass.

He came suddenly with a startled grunt, deep inside his lover. Scout fairly howled up at him as he came just as suddenly all over his own stomach, some of it managing to spurt up onto his chest and neck. Mundy kept fucking into him as he clenched and writhed and kept making those sweet fucking sounds, unable to fight the involuntary thrusts of his hips.

Mundy couldn't hold himself up any longer. His arms gave out and he collapsed forward, pressing them chest to sweaty chest as they panted and gasped in the afterglow. He couldn't tell where his heartbeat started and Scout's stopped. He was fucking exhausted.

It was a struggle to push himself upright, when the time came. He felt weak and dizzy again. Off-kilter. _Drained,_ drained was exactly how he felt.

But it was good. It was worth it.

Eventually he managed to get upright again and clean himself off, though Scout tried his hardest to get him to stay put. A sense of time had returned to him after a glance at his watch. The van was still broken down, and the sun was still beating overhead, and the last thing Mundy wanted to do was wait for sunset when all the bugs and critters would start coming out and complicating things.

“Gonna start running out of shirts,” he grumbled as he picked through the piles of laundry on the floor.

“Here,” Scout called. Mundy looked up, and was immediately hit in the face with something soft. The kid had tossed him one of his own t-shirt, from the seemingly endless supply he kept in that backpack of his. Mundy stood and pulled it over himself and looked down at him.

It was too small, of course. The neck and arms were a little tight, and it wasn't quite long enough for his preference. The fabric stretched tight across his toned chest and shoulders. It also stretched over his stomach, pulling taut over the little gut he'd managed to cultivate in his early years of middle age. Mundy pulled awkwardly at the hem, trying to adjust the shirt without stretching it out of shape. He looked back up at Scout.

“Hot,” the kid said. Mundy had to duck his head again to hide his blush.

“You mind if I get this dirty?”

“Nah, go ahead. I was planning to anyway.”

“'Course you were. Cheers, mate.”

Scout simply smiled at him. He seemed perfectly content to remain undressed, sitting naked on the table and watching Mundy struggle with pulling his pants up.

Hopefully the van would be a quick fix. He didn't feel up to a lot of manual labour after all the bloody 'exercise' he'd already had today.

Mundy needed his tools. He knew where they were, at least. Locked safely in the hidden storage compartment under the bench at the table, where he'd always kept them.

It was what he kept in there with them that made him hesitate.

He had been alarmingly honest with Scout so far. He'd told him about his family, about his childhood, about his life on the road. Admittedly that wasn't much, but it was more than Mundy had ever shared with anyone he'd ever known for such a short amount of time. But the one thing he always managed to skirt around was his work. And for good reason.

Not many people knew what he did for a living. In fact the only people who knew were himself and the people who hired him. He'd very much like to keep it that way.

But he needed those tools. They couldn't waste anymore time than they already had or else his Mum would start to worry. It would be a risk getting them out, but if he could get Scout out of the way for just a minute or two it might not be a problem at all.

“You mind going out and checking on things for me?” he asked casually, stepping into Scout's space again as he offered him his pants. Scout took them, though he looked confused.

“Do what now? I don't know anything about engines, man.”

“You don't have to. All I need you to do is pop the b- the hood, so I can get right to work. There's a latch just inside, and a stick to hold it up. You'll do alright.”

Scout made a long suffering noise, but got to his feet all the same. Mundy waited patiently for him to get dressed and gave another quick explanation of how to get to the latch, and then he was out the door.

Mundy worked quick as he could, pulling away the cushion to get at the combination lock under the seat. He dialed in the code and pulled open the lid, checking over his shoulder as he did. This was what he was most worried about being found.

The rifle was wrapped loosely in a dark wool blanket, to cushion it and to conceal it. His main tool of the trade. The worst kind of evidence against him, if he were ever caught.

Mundy put the gun on the table and dug his toolbox out from underneath. He pulled the lid, meaning to lift the whole thing out, and instead it fell open, spilling tools and supplies into the bottom of the hidden chest. Mundy bit his tongue to stop from swearing and quickly hunched down to grab as many of his things as he could, as fast as he could. But not fast enough.

“Whoa...”

Mundy's head banged loudly on the underside of the table as he startled. He managed to sit up just as Scout was stepping up into the camper.

“What's that for?” the kid asked, eyes as big as saucers fixed squarely on the rifle. Mundy shrugged.

“Hunting,” he lied.

And anyone who knew anything about guns would know that for a lie in an instant. Hunting rifles weren't generally fitted with night vision recon scopes, or bipods. They certainly didn't come with military grade suppressors custom fitted to the end of the barrel.

Mundy hoped Scout didn't know anything about guns.

“That was in here the whole time?” the kid asked, walking forward with his bandaged hand outstretched. Mundy swatted it away.

“Don't touch,” he said, getting hastily to his feet. “You should never touch a gun when you don't know if it's loaded.”

“Is it?”

Mundy didn't answer that. He gathered his tools and passed them all to Scout, mostly to keep his hands occupied, before putting the weapon back in it's hidey-hole and locking it up again. With the seat cover in place, no one would ever know it was there.

He gave the kid a gentle nudge toward the door.

“Go on, you. Let's get the old girl fixed up so we can get a move on.”

 

* * *

 

The hardest part was cleaning up the leaked oil that had been burned onto the metal. It was easy enough to see where it was coming from and to stop up the leak – with a bit of improvising for parts – but he couldn't just go and leave it all a mess like that. Of course, now _he_ was a mess. Oil and grease were smeared all on his hands and forearms, and on the front of the shirt the kid had lent him.

But it wasn't as bad as it could have been, or as bad as he'd feared it was. They were lucky.

“Laurence!” a booming voice said nearby, and Mundy nearly slipped on the gravel and fell over in his haste to straighten up. He looked around wildly, expecting to see a long and dour familiar face glaring at him behind a pair of thick spectacles.

Instead, he saw only Scout.

He was sitting on top of the camper, long legs dangling gracefully over the edge as he hunched forward on his knees. He grinned down at Mundy, waving something in his hand.

“So that _is_ you?”

“Bloody hell, kid,” Mundy said, adjusting his hat against the sun as he looked up at Scout. “Scared me half to death. Could've sworn I heard my d-”

Mundy realized what Scout was holding: his driver's license.

“Mundy, Laurence J.,” the kid recited officially, while kicking his feet against the camper's siding. “Sex: male. Height... uh, 192 cm. Weight? Uh, hang on, what do you people even measure in here?”

“Give it here,” Mundy growled, rounding the vehicle to try and climb up to him. Scout scampered out of his grip with ease, laughing all the while.

“What's the J for, huh?” He was standing up now, towering over Mundy with the sun at his back as he squinted at the little plastic rectangle. “Do your friends call you Larry?”

“No, you mongrel, nobody bloody calls me that.”

Mundy neglected to mention that he had no friends in the first place. But even if he had, they would _not_ have been allowed to call him 'Larry,' of all fucking things.

“It's Vick,” he snapped, making a lunge for Scout's ankle. The kid danced back out of his reach.

“ _Vick?_ How th' hell do you get Vick outta Laurence? Okay, now I'm seriously wonderin' what the J stands for.”

Mundy stood dumbfounded at his own carelessness, giving up his name like that. It was personal. Another personal detail the kid had managed to drag out of him without even trying, even when he'd managed to keep such things from most other people in his life for all these years. Now he'd gone and told him the name that wasn't on any paper's or documents, it wasn't related to his real name at all. Why? Why had he said it?

“Come down here and give back my card and maybe I'll tell you.”

Mundy missed the exact moment that Scout jumped down. But he must have, because at some point he ceased being on the roof of the camper and was instead standing on the ground a couple feet away, grinning broadly. The kid moved suddenly, like a snake in the grass, and Mundy gasped as their lips pressed together. Scout's slick tongue slid against his own. He felt more than heard the way kid chuckled, pressed close to him as he was.

And then he stepped back and left Mundy reeling.

“There,” Scout said, patting the front pocket of Mundy's work shirt. “I gave it back. Your turn.”

Mundy put a startled hand to his pocket and found the card tucked there. He swallowed.

“I said 'maybe.'”

Scout scrunched up his face in disappointment.

“Aw, come on, man! I gave you the card back and everything.”

“It wasn't yours to take in the first place,” Mundy said, attempting to turn and walk back around the truck. He was stopped by Scout's arms slipping around his waist and pulling him close, pulling their hips together.

“Come _on,”_ the kid pouted. His hands slipped boldly into Mundy's back pockets and squeezed at his thin arse, making Mundy tense in surprise. Scout leaned in and pressed a tender kiss under his jaw, like they they were high-school sweethearts all of a sudden. Mundy swallowed again, entirely unsure what to do with his hands other than settle them on the kid's hips. Scout nosed lightly against his sideburns. “I wanna know what it means.”

“I was sick a lot as a kid,” Mundy heard himself saying, wondering why, _why_ he was saying it at all. “Always had a head cold or a sinus infection or something. My mum used to rub a salve on my chest to help clear it up, and I smelled like it all the time so people started, uh, calling me Vicks. Then it got shortened to Vick somehow and... I suppose I just got used to it.”

Scout's mouth continued to press its way along the side of his throat. Smooth lips against rough stubble and razor burned skinned. His tongue darted out, soothing the sting as he sucked over the fattest artery in his neck. Mundy's eyes fluttered closed.

“And you just let 'em call you that?” Scout asked, his breathe a lot little huff against Mundy's Adam's apple.

“Well it's better than bloody 'Laurence,' isn't it?”

The kid laughed softly. Mundy felt teeth against his throat.

And then just as suddenly as he'd wormed into Mundy's personal space, Scout was pulling away from him. He disengaged all points of contact one by one; mouth, chest, hips, left hand, right hand, and left Mundy standing there with a foot of space between them and a blush high in his cheeks. He felt cold again.

“I'll letcha get back to work,” Scout said as he turned away, walking back toward the camper door. Mundy just stood there and watched him go.

When the kid was out of sight, he shivered. The oppressive heat of the day flooded back to him in a rush, making sweat prickle on his brow. He wiped it away with the back of a shaking hand. And then he got back to work.

 

* * *

 

The rest of the day seemed to simply melt away after they got back on the road, finally able to make some headway in their day's journey.

Scout had continued to touch him. Differently than earlier, though. Now instead of trying to give him a handjob every five minutes, Scout wanted to _hold_ Mundy's hand. He wasn't buckled into his seat, instead trying to sit close and rest his head on Mundy's shoulder or lap without doing anything else.

Mundy wasn't quite sure why he allowed it. Physical affection wasn't his strong suit, and he'd driven away plenty of lovers with his general aversion to it. But Scout seemed to defy everything he thought he knew about himself and what he liked, and at every turn Mundy found himself making exceptions to his own rules for the kid.

He still didn't know what it was that drove him so wild for the young American. Whatever fire burned in his blood that made him take charge and take everything fast and hard had never been there at any other point in his life. The discomfort and restlessness that usually overcame him when someone tried to hold him wasn't there, also for the first time. Scout was the polar opposite of what he'd expected, and it was taking a lot of deep thinking to try and piece that fact together.

But thinking deeply about Scout made Mundy's head hurt. Whenever he tried to recall a fact about the kid's life or something he'd said to him earlier, a sharp pain shot through the back of his head, almost like a muscle spasm. Mundy had no idea what that was about, but he wasn't too bothered. Things were good now. Things had potential to continue being good, and too possibly get ever better. No sense ruining that by thinking too much about it.

Scout remained just as cuddly and clingy when they eventually pulled over to sleep, late at night to make up for the lost hours of the day.

The only other buildings they'd passed all day were a petrol station and what looked like an abandoned farmhouse, but not rest stops. Mundy knew there would be one ahead a ways up the highway, but he was too tired to even consider making it there. It would be easier to simply pull over like they'd done their first night on the road and wait until morning.

This time they both climbed into the bunk to sleep.

Scout sucked him off, less vigorously than before, shortly after they'd turned the lights off. When Mundy went to reciprocate, however, he found himself being pushed away.

“Don't worry about,” Scout murmured. He shimmied back up the bunk, pressing close to Mundy's chest and wrapping an arm around his back. He nuzzled his face into Mundy's shoulder. “I just like the way you taste.”

“I-I'll keep that in mind,” Mundy said, still slightly bewildered. But he was tired as hell, and certainly not going to complain about not having to do anymore work for the day.

His strong arms wrapped tightly around Scout and held him close, like he'd never held anyone before. It was nice, he decided. Nice to feel the warmth of another person against him while he drifted off. It was... comforting.

“Hey Vick?” Scout said quietly, when Mundy was just on the cusp of unconsciousness.

“Hm?”

He felt the kid tilt his head, looking up at him the darkness, though he didn't bother opening his eyes to see. The pause was so long he nearly fell asleep waiting. When Scout did speak, his voice was barely a whisper.

“Do you kill people?”

And suddenly Mundy was very awake.

He didn't move. He didn't open his eyes. He didn't change his breathing or alter his grip on the kid in his arms. He remained exactly where he was, and waited.

 _Yes,_ was the answer to that question. _Yes, I do._

But this time, unlike every other time the truth had spilled unbidden from his lips, Mundy didn't say it out loud.

He stayed like that, still and silent, until he felt Scout turn his head again, settling back against his chest. He stayed like that when he heard the change in Scout's breathing that meant he'd managed to drift off to sleep.

He stayed like that, awake and unmoving, until the sunlight began to filter through the curtains.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i don't even know if they even sell Vick's Vaporub in Australia


	4. Day Four - Resistance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no one is more tired of me than seeing my apologies for taking so long to get work published
> 
> but i am sorry this took so long to complete and publish. holidays were a little overwhelming.

Mundy's eyes kept falling shut, no matter how hard he fought the heaviness of his eyelids. The inside of the camper was growing lighter with each passing second. Morning. It was morning, and he hadn't slept a wink.

Scout was pressed close against him. His long legs were tangled with Mundy's own, one of his wrapped hands draped around Mundy's middle, his head using Mundy's shoulder as a pillow. Mundy was trapped. He couldn't move a muscle without alerting the kid. He could hardly breathe without feeling like he was going to disturb him or wake him up. All he could do was lay there and wait.

“ _Do you kill people?”_ Scout had asked him, so bloody casually. Like it wasn't the question that Mundy had dreaded being asked for the last fifteen years of his life. He'd spent hours dancing around inquiries about his work, where he got his money, what exactly he was doing when he went to all these faraway countries and cities but stayed for only a week or so at a time. He'd learned to look relaxed under the wary looks he got every time he handed over a wad of cash rather than a charge card. He'd stopped sweating when the eyes of the bank teller got as wide as dinner plates whenever they saw the balance in his account. Mundy had amassed enough Money to not only buy a high end penthouse in the middle of Sydney, but to staff it with a butler and a couple maids and have plenty change left over.

He didn't have a Sydney apartment, of course. But he could afford to.

All his earnings, all that blood-money he'd made doing the dirtiest of work was sitting in four separate bank accounts in three different countries, earning interest and giving some poor little financial adviser a stress ulcer. Mundy was saving it. For emergencies, he told himself. For when old debts came calling, if they ever did. Saving it all for a rainy day. He didn't fucking know why he never spent it. He just didn't there.

It was better to let it sit there. A number that he could look at and remind himself what a human life was worth, and calculate just how many he'd taken.

So yes, he killed people.

But owning up to that fact, saying the words out loud and trying to skirt around the term _murderer_ would undo years and years of mental blocking that he'd been building up in his head. It was the one thing that he could never bear to acknowledge.

That, and the fact that he _liked_ it.

Mundy felt Scout shift in his arms and stopped breathing.

The kid woke slowly. Rolling his face away from the light and curling his arm closer to his own chest, Mundy feared he might end up going to back to sleep.

But then he sighed deeply and lifted his head, blinking sleepily at Mundy through those long eyelashes.

“Hey,” Scout said softly. “You awake?”

Mundy opened his eyes.

“Yeah.”

“You get any sleep?” the kid asked, so fucking casually again, as if he didn't know the answer. As if it wasn't his fault.

“Nah,” Mundy said, swallowing hard.

He was waiting for the question to be asked again. Now, in daylight, when he couldn't close his eyes and feign sleep and ignorance. Scout would ask him again in the light of the morning sun and he would have nowhere left to hide. What he'd done. What he was.

“ _Murderers, the lot of 'em,”_ his father had snarled, ages ago, watching the big story on the evening news. A ring of mercenaries and assassins for hire had been uncovered to be operation out of America, using stolen and reverse-engineered tech Australian tech to run their operations internationally. Overthrowing burgeoning governments here, striking down disagreeable national leaders there, identifying themselves with only the cryptic moniker of MANN. They'd taken credit for the deaths of politicians, community leaders, scientists, authors, actors, all of them seemingly at random. Mundy wondered how many more had gone unacknowledged

“ _They should be hanged, the lot of them,”_ Mundy remembered hearing his father say, pounding his fist into the arm of his old recliner. _“They'll be judged in the end, every one of them. They'll get there's, you'll see. Best to make an end of them sooner than later.”_

They'd gotten into an argument after that, because Mundy had to go and open his big mouth and question his father's sense of justice. But that was a memory better left alone for now.

If only his father knew that his own son had joined that very group of murders, and made a damn good living out of it. Fifty grand for every job, with bonuses for clean kills, no witnesses, statements made.

Shooting a gun was about he was ever any good at it, or so his father told him. His father had also told him that if you're good at something, you should never do it for free. Well, Mundy was a killer, and he was a fucking good one. And he was paid very, very well.

“You look good all scruffy,” Scout murmured suddenly, dragging Mundy back out of his unbidden musings. The kid was staring at him, features soft in the minimal lighting. Mundy immediately lifted a hand to his own face, rubbing at the coarse stubble on his jaw and cheeks. It wasn't a proper beard and never would be, never would be anything close to 'traditional' Australian facial hair. Mostly he just shaved it all off rather than be ridiculed for trying and failing miserably to fit in. He'd certainly never gotten a compliment about it before.

“You like this?” he asked, looking down at the naked kid half draped over his chest. His own voice was still rough with sleep, and he'd been told in his own brief experiences that he sounded best when he was tired. That must've been true, the way Scout was smirking at him. He shifted slowly, pushed himself onto his arms and leaned up. Mundy wasn't ready for the kiss.

“I like _you,”_ Scout breathed. His buck teeth nipped at Mundy's lower lip, hot tongue sneaking past his lips. Mundy let out a startled grunt as he felt a hand on his inner thigh, and moving further upward with every passing second. The kid laughed at him.

“How 'bout you, huh? You like this?”

Scout was already half hard again his hip and somehow Mundy was getting hard himself. His head was swimming. He too tired for this, too emotionally drained after lying awake in fear all night long. But there was something so wonderful and familiar about the way Scout was touching him. Feather-light fingertips teasing along his length and making him shiver, while the kid's lips had left his and were starting on a fresh new mark on his collarbone. Mundy hummed softly and relaxed into the sensations. The tension drained from him when he put his hands on Scout, and felt nothing else but smooth, welcoming skin.

“It's good, right?” the kid murmured, gently pushing Mundy's shoulders flat on the padded cot. “Fuck, you're so good, can't get enough'a ya...”

“Christ, mate,” Mundy groaned as Scout slung a leg over his own, twisting and shifting himself into position under the blankets. “You always this ready to go?”

Scout flashed him a wicked grin.

“You know it.”

Mundy sucked in a breath as the kid reached down and wrapped those nimble fingers around his shaft, guiding him up and in. The kid was already ready and slick, though Mundy couldn't remember when he could have done it. It didn't matter. Scout rolled his hips and sank onto his cock, and Mundy damn near forgot his own name.

It was a cramped and awkward fuck. It should have been. Scout had to hunch over him, forearms braced on Mundy's chest to support himself as he rode him. Mundy's legs were too long to bend without his knees hitting in the ceiling, making it hard to plant his feet for the leverage he need to buck upward. All he could was fit his large hands on Scout's hips and try and help him move without banging his head on the roof.

“Yeah, that's it,” Scout huffed against his ear, their foreheads pressed together and slick with sweat as he bounced up and down. “C'mon and give it to me, I want you to give in to me.”

Mundy stalled out of his rhythm for a second, confused. But then Scout was kissing him, wiping away the doubt with tender presses to his lip, his chin, the corner of his mouth. Mundy forgot why he was worried. He forgot what exactly had worried him in the first place.

Scout was on top of him and moving all around him. Every piece of them was together in that moment. How could he have ever been afraid of that?

Mundy came with a weak cry, clutching the tops of Scout's thighs as he filled him with his release. He felt Scout clenching around him, Scout's fingers in his hair, Scout's mouth at his throat and teeth of his windpipe. He felt a scream perched in his throat, and felt the moment it melted into a moan as his body went limp. Spent of energy, spent of sensation, spent of all he had to give. And the sun was barely up in the sky yet.

Scout flopped bonelessly on top of him, panting and laughing and nuzzling into his shoulder. Telling him how good he was, how fun he was, how he could get used to this. Mundy's arm found their way around Scout's middle, taking comfort in holding him close. But he couldn't shake the unease of what he'd heard – what he _thought_ he'd heard. It was probably nothing. There was nothing else it could be, truly, and yet...

Just a feeling, he supposed.

 

* * *

 

Around noon, Mundy pulled over to the side of the road to take a much needed piss. When he got back into the van, music was playing.

“What'd you do?” he asked, staring at the lit-up face of the radio. Scout sat with his feet hiked up on the dashboard, arms crossed behind his head and a smug expression on his face. He blew a large, pink bubble then popped it with a snap.

“Got it workin' for ya.”

“I can see that, but how?”

Scout shrugged.

“Crossed a few wires, gave it a good whack or three. Figured you gotta be pretty tired of listenin' to me talk, huh? 'Sides, you've been good to me, man. Thought I'd do somethin' good for you.”

Mundy wanted to point out that all the sex they'd been having over the past three days was absolutely 'something good' enough for him. But he _was_ grateful, and managed to mutter out a thanks anyway. He'd missed the radio.

The volume was cranked up and in no time Mundy's fingers were drumming on the steering wheel as he got used to the beat. Australian music was an ever changing animal, never sticking with one sound or trend for more than a couple months. It had changed _a lot_ since last Mundy had been home, apparently. He'd never heard anything like it, but Scout seemed to know every word.

He couldn't help but watch the kid out of the corner of his eye. Sitting in his seat, belt unbuckled no matter how many times Mundy chided him on it, grooving and swaying and snapping his fingers like he was in his own little dance hall. He didn't have a perfect singing voice, but somehow his tone seemed to blend and meld with whatever happened to be playing. Even the wild synthesized voices and electronic instruments couldn't phase him. Scout was just jamming along, shooting smirks at Mundy when he caught him looking.

What Mundy was starting to like most about Scout was the company. More than the amazing sex, more than the surprises around every corner, he enjoyed little things like this. Listening to the radio together. Dancing it their seats. It felt natural. It felt _right,_ to be then and there, and with Scout. It was a feeling he never wanted to end.

_Give in to me._

Mundy shuddered, the whispered words slithering across the back of his skull. He shot a furtive look at Scout. Watched the kid bouncing in his seat with as much energy and joy as he'd bounced on Mundy's cock that morning, when he'd spoken those awful words.

_Give in to me._

Had he heard right? Mundy's brain was so addled by sensation in that moment, Scout could have been saying anything to him. So why did that stick out so much in his mind? And why the fuck did it scare him so badly?

Scout looked at him suddenly, bright blue eyes locking with Mundy's own through the yellow tint of his sunglasses. Clear and cold and burning with something so dark and terrible unlike anything Mundy had ever known. He grinned and his teeth were too sharp. Something was wrong with features, twisted and waxy and _wrong._

 _Give in to me,_ Mundy heard again, clear as a bell. A thunderous resonance in his chest. An urge, the kind a man gets when standing on the edge of a precipice with a bottom that's too far down to see. The uncontrollable urge to, if not leap, then to simply let himself fall.

Mundy jerked his head sharply, looking Scout full in the face-

And found him completely normal.

Big blue eyes, buck teeth, high cheeks and a thin, youthful face. No deformities. No horror or fear. Just a kid, grin drooping in confusion at the way Mundy was looking at him.

“You okay, man?” he asked, reaching out and putting a hand on Mundy's thigh, patting him comfortingly. Mundy swallowed hard and nodded.

“Y-yeah. Yeah, fine, I just- For a moment I thought...”

What _had_ he thought? He'd forgotten already. Something made him uneasy, frightened even, but... he couldn't remember what. It was gone.

“Sorry,” he muttered, and turned his eyes back the road. “It's nothing, sorry.”

“No worries,” Scout told him, giving his leg a squeeze. His hand stayed there, warm and weighty, and Mundy was soothed by its presence. They drove on, the radio playing but Scout no longer singing along. His fingers drummed and his leg was bouncing, but Mundy missed his voice. He just didn't know how to ask for it back.

He was thankfully saved the embarrassment of figuring it out by a timely interruption.

“ _We interrupt this program with a breaking news broadcast.”_

Scout let out a huffy whine and reached for the dial, but Mundy quickly waved his hand away. He always liked to keep an ear out for the news bulletins, for fear that one day he'd hear his own description listed as a wanted criminal. It hadn't happened yet, he was too careful for that, but he wasn't stupid enough to never worry about it.

“ _A statement has been released by the AFP regarding the brutal murder of beloved Prime Minister Evelyn Morgan and her fiancee that took place yesterday, just hours before their wedding.”_

“Bloody hell...” Mundy muttered, turning the volume up even higher over the engine. The Prime Minister killed at her own wedding, without the culprit being caught on the spot? Just what kind of a country had he come home to?

“ _Miss Morgan was reportedly found in her locked dressing room suffering from severe blood loss, though the exact nature of her wounds have not been released at this time. Miss Simpson-Ward, her fiancee and daughter of controversial actor-turned-politician Riley Ward, is believed to have walked on the murder in progress and startled the assailant, who then attacked her as well. Her neck was broken, in a manner that experts say would have killed her instantly._

“ _The nature of the deaths, and the fact that the perpetrator was then able to leave the premises undetected and remains on the loose even now, has some people wondering if this could have been a professional assassination. And if that is the case, who could have ordered it and why?”_

Mundy's blood ran cold.

The news anchor had voiced his thoughts exactly on the methods of the murders. Bit messy, getting walked in on, but other than that everything sounded far too clean to be a crime of passion or some madman on the loose. There was another killer for hire in Australia, it seemed.

Somehow, it rankled that _he_ hadn't been the one chosen for the job.

“ _Investigators do not have a suspect at this time,”_ the voice on the radio continued, _“nor is it known if this was the work of a single person or if a larger manhunt is in order. Due to the killer's ability to not only make their way into the high security wing containing the Prime Minister, but to also escape unseen from a property with only three hundred guests in attendance has raised the possibility that they could have been among the, what has been described as, small army of security, waitstaff, and caterers present at the event. A large number of people have been detained for questioning, but so far no word has been released regarding any evidence or criminal charges. I'm Bryce White, Australian National News.”_

“We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming,” another man's voice said quickly. The music started up again. Something fast and loud, and clearly halfway through the song.

Mundy frowned at the radio, for all the good that it did. He wished they'd given more details. Hell, he wished he'd been able to hear about it when it happened.

Attacks on government officials weren't unheard of in the country, but they'd lessened significantly in recent years due to stricter immigration laws and technological security enhancements. Even the most recent in his memory hadn't been truly successful. But Australia had plenty of enemies, and one of them was bound to slip through the cracks eventually. Shame it had to be now, though.

“So what does all that mean?” Scout asked suddenly, and Mundy looked over to find the kid watching him.

“What?”

“Your president is dead, right? Ain't that kind of a big deal?”

“Prime Minister, mate, we don't have a president here. But yeah. It's a big deal.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever the person in charge, you know what I mean. So who's in charge now? I mean, do you got a vice pre- prime minister or whatever?”

Mundy sighed and ran a hand over his face, then launched into a very brief explanation on the way the Australian government worked. Yes, there was a Deputy Prime Minister but no, technically, they might not be the one to fill the spot, these things took time, someone would work it all out eventually and if they didn't there would be an election, blah blah, all the half-remembered information he could drudge up from his school days. It was never something he personally found very interesting – living out in the sticks like he did, the idea of your vote counting never meant anything to him. Scout listened with interest, surprisingly. Of all the things for the kid to care about Mundy never wouldn't thought foreign politics would be one of them.

“But they think she was assassinated, right?” Scout asked, turning in his seat and tucking a leg up under himself.

“Sounds like it, yup.”

“But this doesn't have anything to do with you, does it?”

Mundy paused for a very long time.

“No, it didn't have anything to do with me.”

“Good thing you're here with me, huh?” Scout said with a grin. He turned fully, sitting sideways in the seat with his back to the door and his feet sliding into Mundy's lap.

“Company's nice,” Mundy said, not really sure where this was going. The heel of Scout's shoe was digging into the top of his leg in a way he knew would be painful if he let it stay there too long. The kid leaned his head back against the window.

“Yeah, I bet it is. Better than bein' alone, with no one knowin' were you are or what you're doing. Hey, I'm real glad you picked me up, man, I dunno if I ever said that. Means a lot to me.”

Mundy gave him a sidelong look.

"Glad to have you along."

Scout's smile was bright as a sunrise. 

 

* * *

 

The sleepless night had finally caught up to him. With all the caffeine gone from his system Mundy had really begun to feel the exhaustion creeping up on him, making his eyelids droop and his eyes go unfocused for a few seconds at a time. He was in no state to be driving, honestly. But the last thing he wanted to do was pull over and stop for the night. Not when he knew what that would mean.

He had to go.

Mundy had been avoiding the idea since the night before, lying awake in a fit of anxiety while trying to decide what to do about the kid. The answer was there, he always knew it was. It was just something he was hoping to get around. Now, he understood that he couldn't.

The kid had to go. He had to disappear, and fast.

He knew too much. Or he had the potential to know too much, and to make life very fucking difficult for Mundy if he was allowed to just walk away. He knew Mundy's name, he could give one hell of an accurate description, and he had some idea about what he did for a living. Already that made him a danger. Had he given Scout his home address, or told him exactly where he was going? Mundy couldn't remember.

He couldn't remember a lot of things since Scout climbed into his van, and it was giving him a headache.

The easiest thing to do was to pull over, get out and drag the kid from his seat, and hold a hand over his face until he stopped moving. Mundy had big, strong hands. He knew he could cover Scout' mouth and nose and hold him down, no problem. He'd done it before, to much bigger men. But it was the teeth – long and sharp? Big and buck? He couldn't even remember anymore – that gave him pause.

He had a knife behind his seat. A big, curved blade that he'd bought as a souvenir in South Asia somewhere, but it was sharp and perfectly functional. He could grab it, cut the kid down before he was any the wiser. Hack up the body and scatter it in the desert, let the animals do the clean up for him.

But that would still be messy. Mundy wasn't particularly squeamish and couldn't afford to be in his line of work, but there was a reason his favourite weapon was a rifle. He was a sniper. Being up close and personal, with blood on his hands and in his hair and a person gurgling and gasping as they died in front of him... he had a harder time shaking those kind of kills. Took him longer to feel clean afterward.

So he'd have to reach a comprise with himself somehow. Kill the kid quick and clean, but figure out how to deal with him being close while he did it. Not like he could just tell Scout to go out about a couple hundred yards or so and stand still for a bit. Maybe he could've, if the gun hadn't been seen. But it was too late for that.

He'd smother him in his sleep, Mundy decided, as a yawn overtook him. The kid would come and curl up to him, all soft and warm and handsy, and all Mundy would have to do was wait for him to drift off before holding a pillow over his face. Then he could worry about how to get rid of the remains.

It wasn't that he _wanted_ to kill Scout. He liked the kid, really he did, and he had certainly lived up to his promise of being good company.

But this was a matter of self preservation now. All the blow jobs in all the world weren't worth Mundy's life or his freedom. It wasn't personal. Just common sense.

Scout had to die.

And there he sat, half asleep and slumped in the passenger seat, none the wiser about what was coming to him. Almost sad, really, not to at least give him a warning.

“You tired?” Mundy found himself asking, against his own better judgment. Scout's head jerked upward from where it'd been bobbing onto his chest.

“Huh? Oh, uh, yeah. Guess so. Why?”

“You can go ahead and sleep, if you want. I

“Aren't _you_ tired?”

“Doesn't matter.” Mundy shook his head. “We've got to make up for lost time yesterday.”

Mundy wasn't sure why he told the lie. To put the kid at ease? To make him more tired, easier to deal with? But Mundy _was_ tired, so tired he was liable to drive off the road if he didn't get some shut eye soon.

But that wasn't an option. It was going to be a long night, no matter what. Might as well give the kid some peace of mind while it mattered.

Mundy jolted as Scout's hand slid between his legs, cupping him through the front of his jeans.

“I could help you stay awake,” the kid said, suddenly much closer than he'd been before, pressed right up tight against Mundy's side. “Ya know, lend a hand or somethin'...”

Mundy writhed under Scout's firm touch. This was the last thing he needed, with what he was planning to do.

“Quit it,” he grunted and tried to elbow Scout away from him. Scout's lips were at his jaw, trying to win him over, but Mundy wasn't having it. He grabbed the hand tormenting him and pushed it and Scout out of his personal space. Scout reeled back and stared at him.

“I was just tryna help, man, what the hell?”

“I don't want any of that right now,” Mundy snapped tiredly. “Maybe... maybe later, alright? We'll see how the night goes, yeah?”

Scout huffed something under his breath and crossed his arms over his chest, his lower lip stuck out in a pout.

“Yeah, whatever. Just say whenever, it's not like I got anything else to do here.”

Mundy bit the inside of his cheek, not sure how to reply to that. He shifted in his seat to try and quell the little sparks of arousal between his legs, not wanting to drive the rest of the way with a bloody stiffie.

So much for giving the kid a bit of comfort.

Mundy felt bad about that. He felt bad that Scout was upset with him, and that he'd upset Scout. He muttered an apology, which was ignored, and even tried to put out his hand as an offering, if Scout wanted to hold it or something. But the kid just ignored him. That stung more than it should, all things considered. It shouldn't have mattered what Scout thought of him, not with what he was planning to do later, but it _did._ He wanted to be in Scout's good graces. He wanted Scout to like him. And how he'd gone and messed that up somehow, when there was so little time left.

They drove in silence for another half hour or so, and with every mile Mundy's eyelids got heavier and heavier. He was swerving a bit, crossing the lines in the road before catching himself drifting. No matter how many times he rubbed his eyes his vision seemed to get blearier and blearier.

He didn't even notice when Scout's hand slithered back into his lap.

“Stop up here,” Scout told him, nodding at the cluster of lights on the horizon that Mundy hadn't noticed before.

“M'fine,” Mundy grunted, blinking fiercely. Scout was staring intently at the cluster of lights, lightly squeezing Mundy's thigh as they drew closer.

“C'mon, I said pull over.”

Mundy pulled over. He didn't want to. He didn't feel like he had to. But there he was, turning the steering wheel and taking them off the main road and into the cracked parking lot of another rest stop.

The place was more packed than he expected it to be, especially compared to their last dingy stop. The whole time on the road that day they hadn't passed a single big truck, and now there were seven of them parked outside the little set of buildings, along with a few empty cattle trailers and other camper vans. There were a few blokes smoking outside, and through the big windows Mundy could see all he occupied tables in the dining area and the waitress bringing out a tray of food.

It was uncommon to find so many people gathered like this at this time of year, especially this far between cities. And it was the absolute worst timing for it.

“Stay in the van,” Sniper told Scout when they'd pulled in and parked. “I'll see if there's a room open.”

“Get us some food, too, I'm fuckin' starving here.”

“Alright, alright. Lock your door,” Mundy told him, and tested it anyway after it was closed.

He staggered his way toward the brightly lit front of the building. His feet dragged the pavement, catching a crack or a stone and tripping him slightly. Mundy managed to steady himself by shouldering into a big white van parked right out front. He apologized to the inanimate vehicle and continued on his way.

The dining area was barely separate from the check-in counter. The spaces were divided by a flimsy little rope and a sign, directing traveler to the counter with a plump, smiling woman who reminder Mundy of his mum.

He waited in line behind a pair of what looked like teenage girls, hands twined together behind their backs as they paid and glared at him over their shoulders as they left. When his turn came, he asked for a room with a signal bed, a late checkout time, and an extra pillow. He said he was going to get some food, and the smiling woman assured him his room would be ready by the time he was through.

It took significantly longer to get a meal than it did to get a room.

The waitress he'd seen through the window was the only one working, and with how crowded it was she wasn't getting a break for a moment. The young man behind the counter, wearing a grease stained apron and a pair of thin rubber gloves, spoke so fast and with such a thick accent that it took Mundy three tries to understand what he was saying.

The teen girls were in a booth to themselves, huddled together and not paying any mind to the rough types giving them looks. Mundy hoped they'd make it alright, to wherever they were going.

There was a man sitting by himself in the back of the room who far too clean and educated to be in a place like this. Clean shaven and frowning, Mundy spent a few moment watching the stranger try to wipe a stain off the lens of his glasses before moving on.

Most everyone else looked like a trucker or a farmer. Strong men and women with tired eyes and thin, whispy facial hair, hunched over their meat and potatoes and grudgingly pushing around whatever green thing had been plopped on their dinner plate. Mundy knew the look of them all too well. He'd grown up surrounded by people who looked just like this, lived next door to them, got beat up by their kids. This diner in the middle of nowhere felt more like to home to him than anywhere else he'd been in years.

The man behind the counter shoved the bag of burgers in his direction and Mundy took it with a polite nod. He could feel the grease seeping through the bottom of the bag, staining his hand and probably his shirt. But that was the least of his worries.

Mundy stepped outside and froze.

The three men standing outside smoking had been joined by a fourth. A smaller, skinnier, younger man, that Mundy was fairly sure he'd told to stay in the fucking car.

Scout was standing close in their little circle, puffing tentatively on a cigarette and coughing whenever he took too deep a breath. The men around him were laughing, chatting with each other. Mundy approached awkwardly.

“Got food,” he said, looking square at Scout. The kid looked up at his voice and dropped the cigarette. Mundy could feel the other men looking at him, looking at how skinny and fucking weak he was compared to the rest of them. His accent made him sound like one of them, but his appearance marked him as anything but.

But Scout was smiling at him. A big, white, happy-to-see-you smile, and Mundy felt ten feet tall when the kid came to stand next to him and looped an arm around his waist.

“Thanks, guys!” Scout called as Mundy turned and led him around toward the room they'd booked. “Maybe I'll see ya around!”

Something nagged at the back of Mundy's mind. Telling him that no, Scout probably wouldn't see them around, and he shouldn't have been seen by them at all. He should have been angrier, probably. He definitely felt like he should be worried, but he wasn't at all. Not with Scout pressed against his side and a room all themselves only steps away. Whatever it was he'd been so worried about on the way here... well, it couldn't have been that important. Otherwise he would have remembered it. All that stress for nothing.

Mundy slept well that night. He fell into bed with a belly full of greasy food and a greasy hand on his cock, and he drifted off into oblivion with his face buried in a head full of soft, sandy blonde hair.

The extra pillow was very comfortable, he had to admit. Good thing he'd remembered to ask for it, for whatever reason.


	5. Day Five - Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> how's that for faster updating huh

Mundy woke up cold.

He groped blindly for the warm beside him, intending to pull it closer and warm them both up. His hand patted the blankets, searching for something that wasn't there and finding only cool, blank space in the bed next to him. Mundy frowned and rolled slightly onto his side. His opened his eyes and looked blearily around the empty room.

“Scout?”

No answer.

Mundy sat up slowly.

“You in there, mate?” he called again, looking at the half-shut bathroom door. He gathered the sheets around his waist, more to combat the odd chill rather than out of any sense of modesty, and padded softly across the room. Mundy knocked lightly on the door. When they were was no response to that either, he pushed it open.

Empty.

He tried not to worry. There was still the diner, after all. Scout could've gotten hungry and gone to get himself brekkie. Gone to get _them_ some brekkie. Somehow he doubted it, but he hoped...

Mundy dressed so quickly he put his shirt on inside out and had to waste time flipping it around the right way. He took a spit-bath in front of the sink with the handful of wet-wipes supplied on the counter top and brushed his hair by running his fingers through it once or twice. He was still unshaven.

It was late in the morning. The parking lot was mostly cleared out when he stepped out, all the truckers and farmers getting themselves on the road before the sun got too high in the sky. All the big trucks and trailers he'd seen the night before were gone, but a few vehicles were left. His own camper, right where he'd left it. A little blue hatchback, battered and dusty and missing a tail light. The white van was still there, too, the one he'd tripped into. Big and clean except for the red dust that clung to everything around there, one of those fancy 'convertible' cars that could run on wheels or hover in the city's grid systems. Black tinted windows, and there was some kind of fancy bird painted on the side. Mundy scowled at the parking job.

He took another look around the lot, thinking he might find the kid hanging about with the men he was smoking with last night. But still, he was nowhere in sight.

Mundy was definitely worrying now. Where could he have gone? His pack was still in the van as far as Mundy knew, so he likely hadn't gone far without it. The only place left to look was the diner. And if he wasn't there...

There was a little bell over the door that Mundy didn't noticed the night before. It tinkled overhead, startling him, and alerting everyone in the room to his presence. Not that they paid him any attention at all.

The waitress from the night before was leaning on her elbows behind the counter now, looking as bored as it was possible for a person to look.

The girls were still there, too. Sitting across from each other now, hunched over their table to count out the change and crumpled bills in front of them. They didn't bother looking up to glare at him this time. They looked too busy muttering frantically to each other to worry about anything like that.

And there, in the last place he looked, was Scout.

The sat in the little corner booth, out of everyone's way. Elbows on the table, a plate of happy-face pancakes half eaten in front of him. Smiling. At first, Mundy didn't even notice that he wasn't alone in the booth.

A man was sitting across from Scout, a nearly cleared plate of eggs and sausage in front of him. Dark hair with a bit of grey. Broad shoulders. Big hands, holding his knife and fork in a precise, civilized grip. His back to the door, and to Mundy, but it was the same booth he'd been sitting in the last time Mundy saw him. The night before, cleaning his glasses and frowning. Well he wasn't frowning now.

The man was chuckling softly at whatever Scout was saying to him. Mundy watched, feeling a particular sort of numb, as Scout reached out and put a bandaged hand on the strangers arm, tapped his fingers as though making a point. The kid was still smiling. Leaning forward, shoulders relaxed. Open, and engaging.

Mundy felt like he was walking through molasses. Every step was slow motion and sticky, every lift of his feet took real effort to accomplish. He moved toward the table where his companion sat with this new man, this interloper, and felt his heart hammering against the inside of his ribs.

“So I'm just standin' there,” Scout was saying, with that big goofy grin on his face, “while this guy is just- okay, I'll give him props, he was doin' his best, honestly, which is even more sad, but like the more he pulled at it the worse it got and he was just, ya know, _cryin'-”_

Mundy stopped right beside them. Scout stopped talking. He stopped smiling, too.

“Hey,” Mundy said weakly.

Scout and the man looked up at him together, in one fluid movement that would've been unnerving if he wasn't busy being unnerved by something else. The stranger's eyes were the lightest he'd ever seen. Somewhere between blue and grey, or maybe both at the same, peering out from behind a pair of round metal spectacles. Light and clear as glacial ice, and just as cold as it, too.

But Scout's eyes were colder.

“Oh,” the kid said, slumping in his seat a little. “Hey.”

He did not sound happy to see Mundy. He certainly didn't _look_ happy to see Mundy.

“May I help you?” the stranger asked, his tone polite, but the distaste was evident on his face. For a big looking bloke he had a far higher voice than Mundy was expecting. The accent was a surprise, too.

Mundy flicked his tongue over his own chapped lips, acknowledging the stranger with a nod but looking at Scout.

“A word?”

The kid's long-suffering sigh was not encouraging.

“Sorry,” Scout said, to the other man. “Be right back, 'kay?”

“Of course,” the stranger said, in his odd voice. “There is no rush.”

Mundy felt sick to his stomach. He stepped back as Scout got to his feet, shuffling to give him space, and ended up bumping ungracefully into the chair behind him. The legs scraped noisily against the floor. Mundy made the mistake of looking up at the stranger. Sitting there in his shirtsleeves and tie, hands clasped patiently in front of him, the man was looking at him over the rims of his little glasses with such an unimpressed, disdainful expression that Mundy thought he might be sick then and there.

“S-sorry,” he stammered, trying to put the chair back in place. “I-”

Scout brushed past him without a word, and Mundy took the opportunity to follow him quickly outside.

Scout walked a ways away from the door before stopping. He turned on his heel in a sharp, rigid manner that Mundy had never seen him use before, and crossed his arms tightly over his chest. He nodded, waiting for Mundy to start.

“What's going on?” Mundy asked, sounding only half as frantic as he felt. “Whos' that bloke?”

Scout shrugged. He was looking at Mundy's shoulder instead of his face now, like he'd never done. His blatant disinterest was worse than a slap to the face.

“I dunno,” he said flatly. “Just some guy.”

“Well what're you doing talking to him?”

“Nothin'.” A pause, then, “He's gonna give me a ride.”

Mundy processed that, standing there staring at Scout with his mouth hanging open.

“W-what about me?”

Scout shrugged again.

“What _about_ you?”

The kid's arms were crossed over his chest. Closed off body language, closed off expression. Nothing like the friendly, flirty, chatty young man Mundy had arrived with, been traveling with for nearly five fucking days. There was none of that endless warmth and interest and desire for him in the kid's eyes any longer. He didn't understand.

Scout huffed out a sigh – not a teasing one, this time he sounded truly annoyed – and shifted his weight to his other foot.

“Look,” he said to Mundy. “It's been fun, okay, and I'm real glad you even brought me this far, but what'd you think I was gonna do, come home with you? Nah, man. And I found somethin' better now, so technically you should be thanking _me,_ ya know?”

Mundy didn't know. He didn't understand what that even meant.

He didn't get a chance to ask either, because Scout was putting a hand on his shoulder. The touch was so electric he didn't even realize he was being pushed at first.

“I need to get my stuff,” the kid said, brushing past him. He was heading across the parking lot towards where the camper sat, pulling Mundy along with him like a puppy on an invisible string. Mundy's head was reeling as he tried to understand just what was happening. Something was wrong, something was so, so wrong about all of this, but...

He sucked in a gasp as Scout pressed close to him all of a sudden, as soon as they rounded the back of the camper out of view of the diner. Hands on his chest, lips on his lips, tongue in his mouth. Mundy latched onto Scout and tried to hold on. Tried to melt into that kiss, that _last_ kiss, which he somehow knew was the very last. The kid indulged him for a bit. Let him hold on, let him touch and taste and get as much as he could.

But then he was pushing away, out of Mundy's arms and out of his reach. Blue eyes sparkled with something Mundy couldn't fathom as Scout rocked back on his heels, buck teeth catching his lip in a smirk that Mundy knew had become a part of him forever.

“You _were_ a lotta fun, Vick,” the kid told him with a soft sigh. “Guess you just got lucky this time, yeah?”

He didn't feel fucking lucky.

Mundy felt nothing at all as he found the key to his van and opened the door. He stood by as Scout climbed in empty handed and returned a moment later, backpack slung over his shoulders, baseball cap sitting snugly on his head. A stick of bright pink bubblegum already smacking in his mouth. The kid hopped out of the back and headed across the parking lot without so much as glance in Mundy's direction. He trotted straight over to the big white van with the bird on the side and called out a greeting to the man approaching it. The man from the diner, apparently finished with his meal. He smiled brightly as Scout came right up to him.

It was a peculiar sensation, to watch himself being forgotten. Mundy had endured the effects of the aftermath, dealt many a time with the decision someone made to leave him behind. But he'd never seen the act in progress. He wondered if he was supposed to be angry. Hurt, more likely. But still, he felt nothing at all.

The man with the glasses was smiling at Scout with a row of his own straight, blindingly white teeth, calling out a greeting that Mundy couldn't quite here. He opened the door for Scout. He took Scout's pack for him and opened the back doors of the van, placing it unhurriedly inside. Mundy could make out a business name of some kind printed across the vehicle's back windows, but he could only read part of it. 'Something Catering.'

The man had to have known Mundy was standing there watching him, but he paid him absolutely no attention at all. Not a glance, not a wave, not so much as a 'by your leave.' He closed the back of the white van and disappeared around the other side of it, and then the vehicle was running.

As the white van was backing out of its parking space, the passenger side window rolled itself down.

“Hey, thanks for the ride!” Scout shouted from the moving car. He gave a halfhearted wave, barely more than sticking his arm out the window, and Mundy was embarrassed by how immediately and vigorously he waved back.

And then the vehicle turned and the arm retreated, and Mundy could nothing but watch the van as it pulled onto the road and sped away, back the way they'd come from the day before, with Scout inside. Scout, gone. And leaving him behind.

Mundy climbed into the driver's seat of his van and cranked it on. Then, immediately, he turned it back off. He got out of the cab.

There was a big leather bag under the false seat in the camper, sitting far beneath his rifle and his box of tools. It was dusty and falling to pieces, and it had only ever held one thing since it was given to him fifteen years ago. Mundy grabbed a handful without bothering to check how much. It didn't matter now. It had never mattered, truly.

The little bell over the door tinkled brightly as he pushed it open and stepped back into the diner. The waitress was still slumped, the place was still empty and smelling of grease. Mundy didn't look at the empty table in the corner. It was hard, but he didn't look. He focused instead on the girls in the booth. They were so absorbed in their little argument that they didn't even hear him come in.

The girls stopped talking abruptly as he approached. One dropped her hand under the table, and he knew if she brought it back up there'd either be a gun or a knife in it. There was no need for that.

He set his handful of money, three stacks of unmarked hundred dollar bills, on the edge of the table next to their little pile of wrinkled 5's and 10's. They stared at it with wide, wary eyes. Mundy let go of the money and took a step back.

“Be safe.”

The waitress was standing up straight as he turned away, watching him with the eyes of a hawk. Mundy tipped his hat and stepped back outside.

This time when he got into his van and started the engine, he left it on. He checked his mirrors and clicked his seatbelt into place and make a quick note to himself on how much gas he had left. And then Mundy backed carefully out of his parking place and turned onto the road, and he drove away from that little diner in the middle of nowhere as fast as he possibly could.

 

Five minutes later, he was gasping for air.

He wasn't crying. Not really, anyway, there weren't any tears on his face. His eyes ached like it, though. His shoulders shook with sobs that weren't sobs. His chest was painfully tight, like a pair of giant hands had grabbed him around the middle and was squeezing the life out of him one breath at a time.

Mundy's hands were gripping the steering wheel so tightly they ached. His leg was cramping from the effort it was taking not to slam his foot down on the gas pedal until it touched the floor. He didn't want the van to break down again. He didn't want to have to stop, to pull over and get out and focus on anything other than going forward in a straight line. Every mile that he drove put more and more distance between Scout and himself.

He wanted to go home.

It felt like he was choking on the air around him. Every breath came too short and sharp. Every beat of his heart hit with the force of a sledgehammer. Mundy was panting wildly, fighting with his eyes to stay on the road and not to look back into the rearview mirror.

Forty five minutes from the diner and he was drenched in sweat. He wasn't hot. He was fucking freezing, actually, and shivering violently. The sun was bright as it ever was overhead, the black roads shimmering like water in front of him, and there was a terrible chill deep down in his bones that he couldn't shake no matter how hard he tried. He turned the heater on. He rolled the window down, hoping the blistering heat outside would seep into the cab and warm him up. All the wind did was chap his lips and get sand in his eyes.

After two hours of driving, Mundy remembered that he could listen to the radio now. Scout had fixed it for him. Having it on might even feel like having him back, in a way.

He flipped the switch.

No sound came out.

No lights came on.

And Mundy screamed.

He just sat there and hollered, beating his hands on the steering wheel, the dashboard, the radio, his own face and chest and legs. The camper swerved wildly, jumping from smooth asphalt to bumpy dirt, and still Mundy screamed.

He tore his seat belt off and kicked the door open so hard the side paneling cracked. He fell from his seat and into the dirt, landing hard on his hands and knees. His palms were bleeding. His knees too, probably, but he couldn't very well fucking stop to check them at the moment.

All alone on the side of the road, in the desert in the middle of nowhere, Mundy rapidly collapsed in on himself.

 _You were fun,_ Scout's voice taunted him as he staggered away from the van, heading farther out into the desert.

_I like you._

_I like the way you taste._

_Do you kill people?_

_Give in to me._

“GET OUT!” Mundy screamed to the sky, swinging at thin air _“GET OUT OF MY HEAD!”_

 _I found something better now,_ Scout's voice said, and Mundy sobbed for real.

It was the feeling of being _discarded._ That's what was killing him. The sense he wasn't good enough, wasn't _anything_ enough. Not for his parents, not for his country. Not for himself. Not even for some skinny kid he found on the side of the road. Not enough and never had been or would ever be. That's why Scout left him. Whatever Scout thought Mundy had, it turned out after a few days of getting to know him that he didn't have enough of it. He wasn't worth sticking around for. Not when there were other things – _better_ things – right around the fucking corner. Things that could satisfy whatever the fuck it was the kid hungered for. Whatever it was Mundy could no longer give him.

He wrapped his arms around himself in an effort to get warm as he tipped his face up to the sun, begging for a scrap of its warmth to reach him. Waiting desperately for anything to feel as hot as Scout's body felt pressed against his in the night.

He'd never feel anything like that again, and the realization made him weak.

Mundy didn't know how long he spent in the desert. He didn't pay attention to the height of the sun above him or the length of his shadow behind him. He paced and fumed and cried and crawled until all the fear and anger and anguish had drained from his body and left him empty.

He could feel the heat now. Feel all of it, actually, now that he was half naked out under the sun. He'd torn his shirt off at some point, he wasn't quite sure when, but now that he'd calmed down a bit he couldn't even see where it'd gone. His skin was pink and sore to the touch. Already there were heat blisters in his arms and shoulders. He didn't even want to know what his back looked like.

Mundy stood there huffing and puffing as his head began to clear, shaking it to bring himself back quicker. His lips were badly cracked and his eyes hurt very badly, but at least he'd stopped crying. He turned in place, squinting against the horizon in search of where he'd come from, where he might have left his van. And as it turned out, the main road was only about fifty feet from where he was standing. Having a melt down in plain view of anyone that might have driven by, gawking out the window at the strange emu man having a fit in the fucking sand.

Mundy waited until his breathing had evened out before walking back to his camper. He'd left it running like a fool. Supposed he was lucky no one had come up and driven off with it.

He didn't bother trying to find a clean shirt, just one that didn't have his own dried fluids stained all over it. Easier said than done, with what he'd been up to the past week. But he managed. The cloth was far too rough against his sensitive skin, but it was better than nothing.

Mundy climbed back into the driver's seat and closed his door far more gently than he'd opened it. He checked his mirrors, checked his seat belt, and pulled back onto the main road.

 

* * *

 

 

“Laurence!” his mother cried from the front porch, before he was even finished getting out of the car. “Oh, my boy is home! Jon! Jonathan, get your arse out of that chair and come see your boy!”

“Hi, Mum,” Mundy muttered, a moment before the tiny, white haired woman that had somehow managed to love him unconditionally all his life slammed into him and wrapped her arms around his middle in a shockingly strong hug. He patted the top of her head fondly, then hissed when her hands closed on either side of his face.

“And what the devil has happened to you?” she demanded, turning his head this way and that. “You look like you haven't slept in days, Vick, and what's this burn you've got?”

“It's a sunburn, Mum,” he said, wincing. “I got – _ah_ – I got a bit too much sun.”

“What about sons?”

Mundy straightened up immediately when his father stepped onto the porch. He was an old man now, hunched and wizened and couldn't see or hear worth a damn, but he'd always been sharper than he looked. Stronger, too.

“Hello, Dad.”

“Have you got a son?” Jonathan Mundy asked loudly, squinting at him behind a pair of glasses that were half an inch thick. Mundy's mum shook her head in exasperation.

“No, he hasn't got a son, you daft man, he's got too much sun! Our boy's got a sunburn all over him, have a look! Vicky, go and show your father, boy, let him see-”

“A sunburn? My son hasn't got a sunburn, we don't get fucking sunburns in my family! What's the matter with you, a _sunburn._ Who's gone and put that in your head?”

“Oh, don't you start on him, Jon, he's only just driven up!”

And so he had. Mundy hadn't been out of the car five minutes, and he was already wishing he hadn't come at all. He should have stayed in America where no one knew his name or his face, and chatty Bostonians were a dime a dozen. He never should have come back here.

“Get him inside,” his father growled, turning to shuffle back into the little old farmhouse. “The fucking news is coming on.”

“Come on, pet, don't you listen to him,” his mum said fiercely, hooking their elbows together and forcing him to lean down to accommodate her. “'Course you've got a sunburn, being away so long, your poor body's not used to its own home! Now, I've got a salve that'll clear that right up and get my boy all handsome again, just come and have a sit...”

The living room was exactly as Mundy remembered it. A long, threadbare yellow couch with mismatched pillows on the ends took up one entire wall, with three shelves overstuffed with knick-knacks hanging ominiously above it. His dad's armchair looked ever larger, or perhaps the man sitting in it had simply gotten smaller. The ancient technicolor television had the place of honor in the room, with a fat orange tabby lounging on top of it. The cat was stuffed, of course. Mrs. Whiggins had passed away decades ago, but his mum could never bear to part with her.

“Sit down and be quiet,” Mundy's father ordered as he fiddled with the remote. Mundy sat and was quiet while his mother disappeared off to the kitchen. She reappeared mere moments later with a ludicrously small cup of tea, then vanished again just as quickly. The volume of the TV was set to a deafening level. Mundy had little trouble tuning it out. He'd been doing it all his life, after all.

“Feh,” was his father's favourite phrase while watching the news. It was 'feh' when his soccer team was winning and 'feh' when they were loosing. 'Feh' when a new law passed, or a celebrity got married, or some big company announced just how much money they were making off the backs of poor folk like them, met with the cheers of thousand.

“Feh,” he said, as he glared at the glowing lightbox. Mundy stared down at his tiny tea and tried to figure out how exactly he was meant to drink it in more than one sip.

“-suspect is believed to have stolen a catering van-”

Mundy's head snapped up.

“After screening hours of security footage of the event, which was sparsely covered due to the private location, authorities believe they may have located a positive description of the suspected assassin.”

An image was thrown up onto the screen. A man, head half turned to look behind him, getting ready to step through a door. He was dark haired, with broad shoulders and a little pair of round spectacles perched on the bridge of his nose. It was a distant shot, clearly enlarged and enhanced from a much bigger frame. His features were a bit fuzzy. It wasn't a very good angle, turned and half in the shadows as he was.

But Mundy sat frozen on the couch, the little teacup held in a trembling hand halfway to his mouth, staring in shock at the photo on the television screen. The murderer of the Prime Minister. The accused assassin, the most wanted man in Australia.

The man from the diner.

“Shame about all that,” his mum said from the kitchen, sounding miles and miles away. “And here we were starting to like her.”

“Hmph,” Mundy's father said. “Couldn't even protect herself. Not bloody she could've kept the rest of us safe.”

“Jonathan! The woman's not even in the ground, have a care!”

“Well she can't fuckin' hear me now, can she, Amelia?”

Mundy remained frozen as his parents screamed at one other around him. The television was showing a different segment now, moving on to sports scores and weather statistics after giving only the briefest of glimpses of the man that Mundy was very certain had glared at him earlier in the day. A fellow killer, no less. No wonder his eyes were so fucking cold.

But Mundy remembered Scout's eyes, too. Remembered how easily the kid had left him once he found a newer, shinier toy.

That's what he was. A lightbulb went off in his head as he stood up, ignoring his mother's questions about where he was going as he made his way down the short hall to his childhood bedroom. He brought the little teacup with him. If he tried to let go of it he feared it may fall to the floor and shatter.

Mundy came to sit on the edge of the bed he'd had since he was 8 years old. The springs dipped under him familiarly as he settled into place, slowly leaning backward until he was half-on-half-off the bed.

He felt numb again, like he had in the car. Cold, too, but not like before. This was a different cold. The chill of a sudden, barely understood realization.

Mundy thought he'd been left. He thought that being thrown away was the worst thing that could have happened to him, but now he was beginning to reconsider that. There were things in this world he couldn't comprehend and had given up trying to long ago, but at the very least he knew that things could always be worse.

_Guess you just got lucky this time, huh?_

It was luck, wasn't it? That they'd stopped at that diner, at that time. When there was something there that could catch the kid's attention. Not something better than Mundy, but something _worse._

The numbness he felt now was far more peaceful than his earlier, empty feeling. He understood something now. Something that Scout had told him when he pushed him away. He hadn't gotten it before, he'd been too raw, too confused and vulnerable. His mind wasn't his own before, but he could think clearly now. With distance and time, he could put his thoughts together.

He hadn't been _left._

He'd been  _let go._

Mundy didn't know exactly what fate he'd escaped, or what would have happened to him at the hands of the kid - the  _thing_ \- that called itself Scout. He didn't want to, even as the sick curiosity tugged at the back of his mind. Something told him that if they hadn't stopped at that diner, if that monster of a man hadn't been there to distract him... If Mundy was still the one in the car with Scout, he didn't think he ever would have made it home.

_Thanks for the ride!_

"The ride," Mundy murmured to himself, resting his own shaking hand on his chest. His skin felt gritty beneath his shirt. Unclean.

It was a fucking ride, alright. But he was no longer certain if the van had anything to do with it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to every for following along with this, and extra special thanks to sillyscrunchy for giving me the go ahead in the first place!! <3
> 
> on to the next thing, also featuring Sniper, as voted by my lovelies on [tumblr.](http://genuineanger.tumblr.com)
> 
> also: for those unsure, the man in the diner is definitely supposed to be Medic. the Archimedes Plush item description mentioned something about him stealing a catering van from a Prime Minister's wedding, after all. how could i not do something with that?


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